I walked on the pond, a sheet of ice.

Through the clear diamond,

I saw a face pressing upward, and then others.

I’d always wondered where they were.

I’d almost heard them, all summer,

among dragonflies and lilies, or deeper,

but they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, show themselves

in their long fingernails and hair,

their cheeks and lips mooning upward… .

I could try to name them—Swimmers, Insistent Ones,

Wanderervögel, Onan’s Children—

but they have their own dimensions. That summer,

I gave mysef to the pond where they were born,

still beautiful and lonely for body,

their soulful voices, my first song.