Hard to discern among the birch trees, (BLANK), and lily pads. (Birch trees or fir trees and their similar sounds.) Hard to discern among birch trees BLANK, lily pads. (Feel the reason I can’t recall it, the word that is represented by the blank, involved that you would not find this plant among lily pads necessarily).
Avalanche lilies are the next line: “avalanche lilies (or lily), Indian paintbrushes/ bear’s ears and kittentails.” (Bear’s ears and kittentails, not bears’ ears and kitten’s tails.) Indian paint brushes. (Spell check does not accept ‘lilly’ as there there is just one ‘l’ in it.)
Moss is further down but it, the word sought, is something very like moss: “birch tree, moss and lily pads.” Even having not heard the poem you’d expect moss not to be correct. But the word sought is monosyllabic or at least very short like moss. Hard to discern, hard to discern, what is hard to discern –the ponies are “hard to discern” — among the birch trees, among the thing I don’t know — and the lily pads. Chlorophylles fungi (occurs a bit farther down). (Spell check doesn’t accept Chlorophylles. Wikitionary only includes it as the French plural of chlorophylle.)
Felt I almost have it and feel I almost do have it — it’s there– here — in my face more than in my brain or mind — yet won’t fully emerge as knowledge, as memory, as a thing known, as a thing one might say. It’s one syllable (or two) — it’s a plant. — It’s not moss. I have to look it up. No / It is not going to come. Fir trees’/ shadows are mentioned twice in the poem.
And also, besides this, you forgot that whole stanza after “antelope”: the stanza, as it were, where it goes, “acclimated to grottoes, which issue penetrating draughts.” “Draughts” occurring also in the line with spotted ponies: “brought up on frosted grass and flowers and the(?) (the?) rapid draughts of ice water.” (Might have that wrong.)
Might or should make, maybe, concordance when I’ve done: spotted ponies have “glass eyes” and the glacier is made of “glass that bends.” Spots toward the end, opening is dots – “dots of cyclamen reds and maroons.” Another portion I didn’t even realize I’d forgot: “its ghostly pallor changing…” Fir trees and birch trees (to the “green metallic tinge.”) The fir trees are the ‘austere specimens’ and have their shadows ‘obliterated’; the larches are of ‘polite needles’ conformed to an edge’; and the birch trees the spotted ponies are hard to discern among.
Relative to this struggle of recall, the relief of the computer is thought of/ deplored — would someone look it up. (Computer’s existence seems to imply there’s no point at all to memorization, to memory. Twain: you don’t need to remember if you always tell the truth.) But with the computer I can say even quite roughly what I’m looking for and it will appear. Later, however, when I do check the internet, I’m surprised the search for “hard to discern among birch trees, water lilies” comes up with only nature sites. I have to add “Marianne Moore octopus” to the search bar to get the poem to come up. (Maybe memory, from the standpoint of computers, involves going beyond the first few search results, or the first few pages or hundreds of pages of search results, which represent short term memory or even perception, with memory of the kind implied by Marianne Moore or The Octopus requiring more a “refined search.” Maybe also the search of ones own memory can be “refined.”)
The word was ferns: “hard to discern among birch trees, ferns, lily pads, avalanche lilies, Indian paint brushes…” the e in fern with the i of birch, the n maybe echoed in the avalanche and indian paint brushes. Indiam paint brushes (why do I say that). Am I more or less likely to recall ‘ferns’ in this spot having made this struggle to recall it? [no.] Is ‘fern’ for whatever reason to be one of these words I just can’t recall. [no.] Is it ever to be moss to me. Always moss, which doesn’t sound at all right– Nets, seines, guns, traps, Hired vehicles and gambling.
.i`` * ^ / . . . . . ` `~ 