Kay Ryan is an erstwhile America Poet Laureate and a Pulitzer Prize winner. But what is so delicious about her poem are the mordent inner-springs that seem to unfold in the course of reading. Little 'recombinant' rhymes within lines. Like all good poems, the second and third readings seem to unlock lots of lovelinesses. This is one of my favourites:
We're Building the Ship as We Sail It
The first fear
being drowning, the
ship's first shape
was a raft, which
was hard to unflatten
after that didn't
happen. It's awkward
to have to do one's
planning in extremis
in the early years-
so hard to hide later:
sleekening the hull,
making things
more gracious.