Life pulls us to the surfaces of the world
As fins to water, fingertips to wood,
And measures in saccades the shape of a burl —
The denser the core, the greater the weight withstood —
Rasp untouched, already your fingers have curled.
The sense of a layer’s inseparable from rain;
When sheets of glass disintegrate, their facets,
Falling as droplets, rise breathed-in and tacit —
Grapes from wine, from lamina the grain —
The surface of the pond: Your thirst has grasped it.
Points extend to a line; lines expand to a plane;
Meridians extrude the meaning of between —
Some curving mesh of viscera and vein
Pulled from your breast, each instant re-absorbed
In skin that knows what two dimensions mean:
The very flesh of continuity — innate, adored —
Is consciousness itself that cannot be unseen.
Saccades – Short rapid movements of the eyes from point to point in viewing a scene, fundamental to visual perception.
An additional stanza was included in some drafts of this poem, but was deleted by Hertz from the final version:
The taste of the air out of the bowl of the sky
With fog hors d’oeuvre and dust aperitif
Bakes to the glaze of the earth, compressed and dry —
A rich sixth sense of breadth from so spare a belief.