Be

"A poem should not mean/ but be." - Archibald MacLeish "I have been a blue salmon;"1 I have been a nettle's shade; I have been the gleam of mica; I have been blown thistle down. I spring from a spark on the blacksmith's anvil; I spring from the foam of the seventh wave; I spring from the stir of a mandrake's tendril; I spring from a pause in the strings of noon. Whither shall I flee down the sands of summer? In the shudder of a vision I am made alive. I linger now in your eyes ... Remember? I am what you let my new shape be. 1 From the works of Taliessin, a 6th-century Welsh poet