A Poem Forming

Sarah Webb

July 11, 2021

The poem rises

from something we have forgotten

and we find it again

in the lines of the poem.

I sit and watch the clouds tonight

and each—elephant

streaming tatters of banner, the fish

transforming into a whale—

whispers the secret

just out of hearing but there

nevertheless

not random molecules of water vapor

but mystery

holding its meaning as rain.

I look at the acorns strewn on the deck,

at the wake of a boat that 

slaps a wave across the rocks,

at the notebook open to a page

in all of it, meaning emerging

whether I will it or not

and below them

below pattern, significance

forgotten and silent

a welling

below names, poems, things

alive, alive

coming to be.

Sarah Webb is a co-editor for Just This, a magazine of the Zen arts associated with the Austin Zen Center and Appamada in Austin. She started Zen fifteen years after beginning to write, so Poetry always had a head start, but the practices are so intertwined now she can scarcely tell them apart.