[clarity intermissions]

Something in our snarled overlap invites clarity, and I

want to affirm

this beauty. 

Urged to stop, wondering 

at the odd density 

of work, the eye skips, crosses plains:

A mandala. An invitation. Surveying

variegation, at each level, we sit, for a while,

before moving on.

We know this land. We know what comes after. We know

it contained water,

descending through gradations

toward the present. In the present, everything

is not-now. There is no negotiation with the past

and no truce. Time is crowded with negation – what can be discerned 

and what will not, ebbing

below the reach of correspondence, 

as a lake dreams of sky,

demonstrating that the dream has no face.

It is only a reflection of water,

a vision of diving. 

Resolved

on dying upright, 

we are surrounded

by slow dissolving sky.