Perfectibility
after “Imbued with Stardust”, a painting by Amy Cheng

Hokusai believed in the slow
            perfectibility of forms, in the way,

after seventy-five years or more, the eye
            might finally begin to understand

the quality of a single filament—
            Vein by vein, the green curve of a leaf

spirals from overhanging branches
            to the water below, water that cups

and gathers flecks of foam and the necklace
            of tiny fishing-boats, their bleached hulls

almost indistinct in the hollow of a wave
            off the coast of Kanagawa… 

So it is in this peripheral universe
            that occasionally we look up

from our labors to see the swirling current,
            the distant mountain,

the scroll of birds, our sensible
            garments with fraying sleeves

sprouting vines and soaked through
            with the same indigo ink.

The water writes
             what it erases, then writes again—
 
so much of nothing,
            so much of everything.

First  published in Poetry East, Spring 2007