What silk-thin difference is there

if I stay to dream or go.

Kyoko Selden

That small tug, which at first seems

all on its own in the strait,

can eventually be seen to pull two barges, each

twice its size, because water

understands everything and all

day says “pass, pass by.”  I propose

a plan and we discuss it.  I’m afraid I’ll never

be happy again.  “Bring me

a glass of water,” he says.  “Someone, you know,

has to stay here and take care of things.”

Two ducks fly by.  I take

a few sips from his glass.  Outside it’s

the deep blue of morning that is almost purple

it is so glad to be cheating

the sleepers of its willful drifting, the tangled

blue made up of night and the blue premonition

that will dissolve and carry

it.  Two boys vicious with news are flinging

the morning paper house to house

down the hill.  Two horses out of childhood I loved,

Daisy and Colonel Boy, are hitched

to the wagon.  I hear the cold extravagance of

tiny bells welded into their harness straps.

Iron wheels under us over snow

for miles through the walnut groves.  The two

pearled hair combs he gave me

make a chilly mouth on the sill.  I look up and out

over water at the horizon—no, two

horizons.  One I reached and entered with him and so

is under me, and one that seems

far enough away to be the dead mate of this one.

Between them, lively passage of boats, none

of them empty.  That’s fascinating,

I said to the poet, let me add one.  I thought

there was more water in this glass.

I guess not, one of us said.