Poetics

by A. R. Ammons

I look for the way

things will turn

out spiraling from a center,

the shape

things will take to come forth in

so that the birch tree white

touched black at branches

will stand out

wind-glittering

totally its apparent self:

I look for the forms

things want to come as

from what black wells of possibility,

how a thing will

unfold:

not the shape on paper—though

that, too—but the

uninterfering means on paper:

not so much looking for the shape

as being available

to any shape that may be

summoning itself

through me

from the self not mine but ours.