Waterside

 

He asserted water to be the principle of all things...

- Diogenes Laertius, "Life of Thales" (tr. C.D. Yonge)

From the liquidity of accidents,

possibilities become events

that surge and crest in a necessary end                                                                      

in definition, where they begin again.

                                                                                               

The waves reform and roll back to the sea

to lose themselves in that green mystery

in which the forms perform a constant dance

of the movements of necessity and chance.

The surface stretches away from where I stand

and curves around to another end of land

where, by rule of chance, you might now be,

or by law of hidden necessity.

The figures that dance across the water’s face

before us rise up from an unseen place

beneath the separations, beyond our sight

and leap for just a moment in the light.

I think they are the same figures, both here

and there, and that they appear and disappear

to you and me and join us in an instant

that waves away the thoughts of near and distant.

Distinct mythologies dissolve in sea,

as do the spaces between you and me,

so that the chances dividing us are only

undulations of necessity.