Water Strider

Yeats imagined three small scenes,

Two historic, one mythic,

In which famous characters

Were caught in quotidian

Musings—Michelangelo

Painting the Sistine Chapel,

Caesar in his army tent,

Helen of Troy as a teen,

Alone, practicing a dance.

Don’t disturb them. Leave them be,

So that what must happen did.

That’s not the intriguing thing.

What happened happened. Too late,

Now, even one second since.

Intensity depicted

In stillness pulls you in—

Caesar staring at nothing,

Helen practicing her steps,

Michelangelo’s paintbrush,

No more sound than the mice make.

The astonishing begins

In near silence. Quiet hours

Lead on to what shakes the world.

But that’s not quite it either.

They could be any soldier,

Any kid learning a dance,

Any painter in flow state,

Whoever. The poem’s magic

Lies in the evocation

Of the wayside pause, the work

In progress, the attention

Of someone so attentive,

So unaware of others,

Like you, watching them, it lets

Awareness walk on water

Without disrupting being.