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.