"slippingglimpse" is a 10-part generative Flash poem that combines videos of ocean patterns with text. The work introduces three modes of reading: fullscreen, high resolution, and scroll-text mode. In the first two modes, fragments of words and phrases appear in the ocean, mapped and remapped to movement in the video image, turning from an unreadable text to a decipherable composition. In fullscreen mode, ocean videos "read" the poem text somatically or gesturally. In high-rez mode, the ocean-patterning itself is best visible. Only the scroll-text mode permits human reading of linear print text. The language of the poem comes in part from sampling and recombining the words of visual artists as they reflect on their own work (among them, Helaman Ferguson, Manfred Mohr, David Berg, Ellen Carey, Frances Dose, Marius Johnston, Jon Lybrook, Susan Rankaitis, Hildegard of Bingen).