We pushed off from the crumbled dam
into a lake of clouds,
with duckweed on our scudding chins,
gliding without sound.
The jinking trees grew quietest
where water sketched in the shore,
their disheveled branches wreathed
around the mirrored air.
How sober and unrippled the lake
lay in our level view,
a paradox, it seemed to me,
that its silence held us, too.
Three concentric circles, then,
existed there at once;
widest was the wilderness,
the smallest one our own.
But what was that unruined stillness
of the lucid middle ring,
which from inside the world of flaws
bridged us with every thing?
Water colder than the wind,
so green and darkly clear
that looking downward into it
we saw just where we were:
one swimmer floating near the other
above a mottled sky
reflected in that seamless span
supporting you and me.