u/dApp8_30

It hovers, real and not yet real,

within this mind and soul;

it hides in knowledge not yet won,

in trials that make one whole.

Its style, still hardening into form

will sharpen, line by line;

through lived experience, through error,

it gathers its design.

It waits ahead, not here with me,

but down that sacred stream,

where future thought and future skill

may raise it from a dream.

It swims within that holy course,

then fades from where I stand;

I cannot reach it from this shore,

or hold it in my hand.

It coils along the voyage there,

serpentine and slight;

it glimmers in the moving flow,

then slips again from sight.

It lives only if I go on,

if I endure, improve;

for should I fail, or fall, or die,

it never comes to move.

I reach its tail — it slips away,

still lower down the stream;

may it forever float ahead,

half promise and half dream.

And may it never sink below,

or vanish into sleep,

but bide its time beyond my reach

until I come to keep.

The window becomes a canvas,

glossed in ink-dark pleasure,

where clear colors gather

and break themselves softly

against the glass -

flowers opening in streaks,

songbirds blurred into brightness,

petals and wings

pressed thin by distance.

So the world comes to me flattened,

transfigured into surface,

into shimmer and stain,

too beautiful to touch,

too near to enter.

But beyond the pane,

a bird rises through the lavish air,

its body borne on light,

its small breast given wholly

to the blue extravagance of height.

Around it the sky stands open,

full of radiant waste,

and the day pours itself outward

in opulent flight.

I remain with the image,

the dark room,

the painted clash of things,

and watch freedom

only at the moment

it strikes the glass.