sharp or faint footprint

For what it may be worth, in my own experience, a poem appears as a kind of footprint—as sharp as the one Crusoe saw or as faint as a ghost fossil in stone—but always solitary and iconic: an image, a phrase or a rhyme that is like a bit of music seeking words.

—Thomas McGrath, "Notes, Personal and Theoretical on 'Free' and 'Traditional' Form," Poetry East, #20-21, 1986