Braided Stream 

The threat human will poses is that

of squandering potential, being more 

what one isn’t than what one is. Rather,

“squandering” and “potential” are but points 

of inflection into the content. Containment.

Not-having. In a moment there exists

innumerable instances of thought and

feeling, such abundance one assumes 

the coda was an attribute of the first. 

The mind would like to believe it could move 

beyond the false surface of a name, but 

with nowhere to go, water stirring 

invisibly in the table-glass, 

mind relegates itself to its corners

which do not grind away, despite imaginings 

of spinning stones in mountain-streams.

The hard-edge of the Real would crush the stone 

were it not for the fact of metaphor, but how pleasant

to see figures in a grid, gaze without 

threat of knowledge or change. The mountain-stream’s  

cascade continues to revise its image

without suggestion of fulfilment, 

of reaching an end. Where then, does Mind reach

resolution? Heights of pleasure? 

Stupefaction? Forgetfulness? After uncertainty 

and much agitation comes a cool sense 

of removal, like the painted horizon,

or like the idea of “horizon”

in vacant space. Mind moves beyond “beyond,”

makes a residence there. The mountain-stream

enters the ground and emerges again,

joining the pond where the lily severed 

from its stem skims across the water, the vast 

moving water, the clear surface of it, 

unheroic, obstinate, incomplete.