

I shared with him that his sand poems remind me of Tibetan mandalas that Buddhist monks create with colored sand. It takes days or sometimes weeks for a mandala to be created, and after it's finished, the monks destroy it. "The tide is rising" I said. "It won't be long now, until the tide takes your poem."
He smiled.
Unwinds a thread of her devising:
A thin, premeditated rig
To use in rising.
And all the journey down through space,
In cool descent, and loyal-hearted,
She builds a ladder to the place
From which she started.
Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do,
In spider’s web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken strand to you
For my returning.
- E.B. White, Natural History