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Surfaces

I do not denigrate the surface of things–
that outer shell that holds back all
that might otherwise leak out and fade away:
the snapshots and the clay cup,
the crude paintings on the refrigerator by a naïve hand,
the roses scattered to complete the collage
of a life composed of surfaces:

your hard muscled arms,
the curve of the brush,
the sharp steel of the edge that cut
you out and then back into my life
in silhouettes that, lacking one dimension,
revealed so much more.

Surface meaning is an oxymoron.
Surfaces are never the meanings themselves;
but instead, like a cup, they hold our lives.
Without surfaces the world would be but an idea,
and perhaps not even that.

Who knows but that ideas themselves are surfaces,
clinging to protons and neutrons and quarks.
She is only on the surface?? Impossible—
perhaps just unable to convey what lies beneath,
for every surface of the world lies deep as well.

The leaves have a deeper significance,
as does the sonata and the sonnet.
It is when we do not look beneath the surface
that we fail to see what is connected beneath.
Always, always, a surface is an ocean you can swim in.
It is outer space and inner space.

Geometry tells us that a surface
has only two dimensions, like a square,
yet boxes are comprised of squares.
Everything in our world is more complex
than some would make it out to be,
and surfaces are both doors
and invitations asking us to enter.

Please join me at open link night to post a poem, read some poems or do both at: https://dversepoets.com/2016/08/11/open-link-night-177/