(after Dreams by Linda Pastan)
It begins with a black pencil

rubbed firmly onto light paper

over the fascia of a coin
It starts this way, creating

a new image out of the everyday

but then you think this might be a way
To capture the surface of things

this is how it begins, the surroundings

re-visioned as if a child
Then unintentionally you revisit the house

a fragment of clothing, that old lace doily

that might have been your mother’s
The lampshade, rub hard on it

capture its surface on tissue, then move

to knife, fork, scissors, cheese grater, teapot, curtains
The uneven glass in the doorway

that once led outside

rub over the circular ridges of the doormat
And the eucalyptus leaves that lie over it

then with charcoal on paper, scrape the tree trunk

move on to the acacias, that elsewhere are called mimosas
Rub salvia, veronica and the plant

whose silver leaves have a name you often forget

then edge toward the pine needles
The sand beneath them and your feet on the track

let them lead to where the waves lap

to the irregularity of rockpools
That encompass creatures at the edge of the tide

the various seasnails and seaweed—olive-green thin

and curved, or linguini-like—wide brown and flat
Rub the crystalline white shape

that might or might not be a plant

as if an ancient stromatolite neither flora nor rock
Trace over sand with white pastel onto thin black paper

or blend light with white to nothingness

like the children we used to be
While the ones we’ve grown into

make a rubbing of the ocean, the see-through jellyfish

the dolphins whose presence stir the waves
Rub the clouds, the sky

its unnameable

unreachable galaxies
Capture the texture

the surface of the moment

before it recedes—it always recedes.