27 february 2012
Pool
The moon leant down, her fingertips kindling
the pursed lips of each little wave of the pool
blue O, with watery fire, til it said 'oh' or 'oh'.
Tight in the grip of its meniscus the water bound
the drowned forms of tigerish moths, that wings
outflung, soddenly stalked our gleaming abdomens.
We beat them back in fear and sluggish disgust.
From somewhere in the yard there came a light.
How our feet were magnified in the depth's glass!
There, by the hose head the underwater wrinkled.
Another, striped and flattened like a snake run over,
pricked like arteries themselves, shot its piddling arcs
and the night ran on and we ran back onto the stoop
ankles stuck with blades of sticky, green grass, as
a new-moon colored band of pale convolvulus
white and yellow bells, a-swinging, un-ringing,
raced slyly around the cornice of the house and
anywhere the lawn was alive with little frogs
'Let us in, let us in', everywhere shouting.