Try to read snatches of lines as your eye moves up and down while the words move right to left. Stay with the poem a while, reading and remembering phrases and how they fit together, for an entirely different poetic experience.

This poem was not written out first and then given a computerized format; it was constructed on the screen carefully matching words and lines as it came together. I give the poem below in normal text view, you can read it that way but the whole effect of synchronous moving verse is lost. Without the motion as the way a HyperPoem asks to be read, this becomes just 'another poem'.

drops appearing slowly under the belly of a cloud floating free in easy space

gliding on air, until they start to find others crowding them and have to nudge

and shoulder against them to mark off their airy liquid territory

Soon the drops are lost in a grand whirling gesture, dashed headlong earthwards in gathering speed

become a sheet of swirling water now formed into a wave of blinding force

until it dashes itelf to death on the field and trees and highways traced far below.

Stopped short, it is only a wedge of water and an army of raindrop warriors come to naught.

As if in some condolence for this vast effort spent, the overwatching SUN raises its radiant eyebrow,

lighting the world again for everyone to see the bright light shine

on the loveliness of trees and rocks of ancient age and rivers now coursing full,

washing the silt away from bright polished stones

long aeons rolled in the ancient riverbeds.

William Harris
Middlebury College
www.middlebury.edu/~harris