Keeping Things Whole by Mark Strand

The speaker says, "We all have reasons for moving. I move to keep things whole." I move to keep myself alive in every sense of the word. I'm alive in my absence, and exist every place I've been and therefore can say that I will live even when I die. That is how I find myself in this piece. The persona is this poem speaks as I just spoke, for example, "When I walk I part the air and always the air moves in to fill the spaces where my body's been." There is poignancy in knowing that even when you are an unknown in the midsts of knowns and vice versa.