Pull, pull
The string, in Spanish, Greek, Swahili,
The fine line, the thin thread of reason equivocating, reverberating
As things do, like a plucked note.

Grave diggers for the cradle of next mind and
Numbers to intuit the circle,
Equilateral places of the mind
Where the real dials in its number
As a solid foundation, if not quite comforting.
Not quite comfortable to live in, on or beyond.
What is left is left out, interrogated
From a basis of labor and ownership, faith and security.

Beauty done in landscape particulars,
Not quite natural but to our specifications.
Intricate, differentiated, able to hold water and
Endure in hostile climes and conditions
To ring like the bells wielded by Sunday children
And their mothers – to call us back to clarity / reality.
A thing of beauty and the hope / knowledge that that
Is not enough.

That the tip of the iceberg could roll, bottom up and
The concomitant wave could capsize us too and that
Soaked and soaking are themselves inimitable, partial,
Requiring the additional actions of waves and inevitability and
The questioning of man by woman.

To question the deep space, darkly, secretly
But in earnest, for all.
The knowing tube of the surfer’s wave, high belly,
Low mind in the center of gravity, beatific, oracular,
Numbering one among many and again,
Not quite the same.
Identity need not be so personal
But in the protection self,
Some carrying of old water should not be disturbed.

Watering the plants, heightening the experience,
Inimitable crest and fall and the drop from on high
Like a rain drop from its cloud,
A circling of fair squares like schooners or barques,
Plying the surface as seen birds eye from high above.
Seen capsized by fish below
As our undersides reveal
That time past came a long way to leave us here,
That time future is the horizon’s call or
The reason birds can migrate so far for a single season.

Blush of Spring now,
Table land of the rutted wheel,
The grass and rabbits measuring out the days ahead,
Fat in the hunt of Summer,
Quickened in Autumn and again
On the road, paying tolls and dues
To know it first,
Original and bright.

By Rolf Stavig
5/20/2023