Snail Spirals

My contribution to The Second Annual Bloggers (Silent) Poetry Reading:

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For Once, Then, Something
by Robert Frost

Others taught me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths--and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

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Ever feel like if you could just sit still enough or be quiet enough or listen hard enough or see clearly enough, you would know the answer? Have a moment of clarity when it would all make sense and fit together? There have been two moments in my life when I thought I was almost there, but it always slipped away before the thought was fully formulated. Both times, the experience left me shaking, rather like the first time I watched the moon rise through tree branches and felt dizzy from the rotation of the Earth.

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Of course, if you've read Douglas Adams, you already know that the answer is 42.