Courting Surfaces
For courting surfaces
unscathed, to pass over furnace rocks,
to slide down an oily pane or walk
the waters, tension held, requires
a lightness, speed, yearning, the danger’s
to stop, look down, attend until you
deepen, disappear, an aspect
of where you are, at one with its hue
and weather, weight and changing, as a
seed will die, become the thrust
of tendril, root, and bloom, a native
fully held in time: someone
here, here or nowhere,
all along.
—Barry Spacks
—found in Ploughshares (1974; Vol. 2, No 1.)