1.

Finally I heard

into music,

that is, heard past 

the surface tension

which is pleasure, which holds

the self

afloat, miraculous

waterstrider

with no other home.

Not that I heard

very deep,

but heard there was a depth,

a space through which

you could fall,

an echo travel,

and meaning

—small, jewelled, deep-water—

flash. I heard

in a piano concerto

the distance between the single instrument

and the whole

republic,

heard the argument each made

for fate,

free will.

And listened

to the piano, solo,

on its gold hook, the tip

of the baton,

struggle

and struggle.

2.

From the mud

of the Arno

in winter, 1967

we pulled up

manuscripts

illuminated by monks

in tenth century

monasteries.

Sometimes the gold letters loosened

into the mud

into our hands.

We found

elaborate gold frames,

Annunciations,

candlesticks. The ice

the mud became

along the banks caught

bits of sun

and gleamed.

Eddies, twists, baroque knots

of currents,

all the difficulties

of the passage

of time

caught and held

in the lush browns

we reached through

blindly

for relics. It was

almost spring,

we waded out further,

the bells

in the churches

kept up

their small

warnings. The self, too,

is an act of 

rescue

where the flesh has risen,

the spirit

loosened… .

3.

Upstream the river

is smaller,

almost still.

On a warm day

the silence of the surface holds

its jewels,

its tiny insect

life.

In silence the waterstriders

measure ripples

for meaning.

They catch the bee

that has just touched

the surface

accidentally. In silence

the strider

and the backswimmer

(its mirror image

underwater, each

with ventral surface towards

the waterfilm)

share the delicate

gold bee. They can both,

easily,

be satisfied. They feed.

Sun shines.

Of silence, mating striders make

gold eggs

which they will only lay

on feathers

dropped by passing birds

or on the underside 

of a bird’s tail

before it wakens and

flies off, blue and white and host

to a freedom

it knows nothing of.