The Singular Discrepancy Between Poet And Object - Suzanne Craig-Whytock

Poet: The beauty of the drowning pool

Is in its indiscriminate depths.

It does not choose its victims

Or hunt them down

With any human intent.

There are no hungry, ankle-grabbing creatures

Lurking in that water.

In the drowning pool, you can see clear to the bottom.

It is so indifferent that one cannot even say

It waits

For the foolish or unhappy to stumble and heave themselves

Out of light and life.

Sometimes on windless nights

Ripple-rings disrupt its serenity.

Perhaps it weeps for the dead

Perhaps for itself.

Object: I am not the drowning pool

(Yet that’s what they call me/I hear them calling to the young ones/Don’t go

near there/you’ll fall in and drown)

I do not choose

I do not hunt

I merely am

(In the same way that I have been and will always be/passive/placid/

storm-wrenched/stiff ice-glazed)

I wait for the rain to feed me

Nothing more nothing less

Not indifference but my nature.

The motions of my being on windless nights

Are the sighs of contentment.

(There is more beauty out of me than in my depths/I have no sympathy for those

who wander too close with typical human clumsiness)

I am not the drowning pool

I am I am

I weep for no one.