For Those Who Would See

by Derek Sheffield

the swift and ceaseless sprinkler whirling
and flinging its bright globes

drop by drop has filled a blue bowl
left out on the lawn. The little pool
formed by that embrace never stops

breaking and regathering—winks of calm
coming between bouts of splattering—

and in the way the pool accepts
each troubling drop so it becomes
the surface that in the next instant

shatters at the next and so on,
this is also clearly a matter of light

splashed and light
scattered in all directions
for anyone who happens to be watching.

Reprinted with permission.

Read poetry by Derek Sheffield in Not For Luck, available for purchase online.

Ican’t help but read “For Those Who Would See” as a commentary on the nature of our minds, the way thoughts and worries come and go with only “winks of calm/coming between bouts” of distraction and disturbance. At first glance, Derek Sheffield’s poem offers something mundane and simple: “a blue bowl/left out on the lawn,” filled with water from the “swift and ceaseless sprinkler.” How many of us have watched a summer sprinkler flinging droplets across the grass of a yard? Yet in Sheffield’s masterful hands, this act of truly seeing the blue bowl, the “bright globes” of water, and the sprinkler itself, becomes an exercise in mindfulness and guided attention. He doesn’t simply describe the bowl of water, but instead shows us how its surface (like that of the mind, perhaps) is always “breaking and regathering.” What’s different about this “little pool” is that it “accepts/each troubling drop” in the instant it arrives with no resistance, adding it to the whole. By watching exactly what happens in this scene and allowing his observations to ripple outward with meaning, Sheffield implies that so much of life is not about what we see, but how we choose to see whatever crosses our path.

Invitation for Writing & Reflection: Sit outdoors for a while with a notebook or laptop and just watch the area around you, seeing what calls to you. Though we’re used to noticing and labeling what we see then quickly moving on, let your attention linger for longer than might feel comfortable at first. How would you describe this patch of ground? How might you too have been changed by this sustained act of noticing?

ABOUT THE POET: Derek Sheffield

Derek Sheffield’s collection, Not for Luck, was selected by Mark Doty for the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize. His other books include Through the Second Skin, finalist for the Washington State Book Award, Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, and Cascadia: A Field Guide through Art, Ecology, and Poetry, which will be published in the spring of 2022. When he isn’t editing poetry for Terrain.org, Sheffield can often be found in the woods or along the rivers of the eastern slopes of the Cascade Range in Washington. Learn more at www.dereksheffield.com

POETRY SELECTION AND COMMENTARY BY JAMES CREWS

James Crews is the author of four collections of poetry: The Book of What Stays, Telling My Father, Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of two anthologies: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The New Republic, The New York Times Magazine, The Sun, and have been reprinted in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry and featured on Tracy K. Smith’s podcast, The Slowdown. James teaches at SUNY-Albany and lives with his husband in Vermont.

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