Figure / Ground
A short poem on attention — what we name as the thing, and the quiet field that lets the thing be seen at all.
We are taught to watch the figure: the ship, the argument, the face.
But the ship is only a ship because the sea agreed to hold still,
and the face is only a face against the long dark of the room.
I have spent too long on figures. This year I am learning the ground —
the rule beneath the move, the silence that the note divides,
the system, patient and unwatched, that lets the visible occur.