Design

Design - meaning Summary

Motion Ending in Nothing

The poem tracks a single drop of water from its origin in lichen or moss through a sequence of movements: joining others, trickling, running, falling, dashing, and spreading into deeper pools and shallows. The language compresses motion into a succession of verbs that convey increasing speed and dispersal, then shifts to the drop’s final diversion into an eddy. That closing image emphasizes cessation—movement reduced to "nothing’s curl of motion spent"—so the poem reads as a concentrated observation of transience, energy dissipating into quiet stillness.