It is then, in the
midst of his
most meager intention—
to include
just a few
simple lines describing
the garment of
Christ in a sermon—
when, gradually
he finds
that he can no longer
find them,
finds that
the more eagerly
and the more
often he repeats them,
the more they start to blossom,
dancing and unfurling,
molting and reforming, spiraling
far out to the edge of his mind.
Each word is a universe,
bursting with solar systems
which crash and heedlessly
annihilate each other,
is a swirling weather pattern
roving the face of earth
and counterbalanced somewhere
by a long lost sister.
Each word is an atom,
fuzzy, charged, hard to locate,
and with so many orbiting
layers of association
whizzing and casting
such vague and fantastic shadows,
that each time he looks,
none is ever quite the same.
Fleeing outdoors
to a great brown lawn, at last
he finds, scratching and
feeding there, seven large quizzical
white birds—not swans,
he thinks, sighing,
relieved and newly confident
in certitude's return.
