And the Time Is: Poems, 1958-2013

The Most You Least Expect

105 The Most You Least Expect You think of photographic paper drowning in developer. Slowly the whiteness darkens into forms. Shadows become a face; the face, a memory; the memory, a name. The final clarity evolves without a rush until it’s there. It’s like your struggle to remember what you know you know but just can’t quite recall. No matter how you frown, the secret stays beyond you. You reach. It moves. You reach again. Again it moves. It’s disobedience itself, but still it wants so much to be regained by you, only by you. Later, when it lets itself be known, you wonder how you ever could have lost so obvious a thing. And yet you take no credit for retrieving it. It came to you on its own terms, at its own time. 106 You woke, and it was there like love or luck or life itself and asked no more of you than knowing it by name. The name is yours to keep. You burn to share this sudden and surprising gold with everyone. You feel the glee of being unexpectedly complete and sure and satisfied and chosen. ...