POEM · PROXIMITY AND SEPARATION
A hundred bubbles moved across the pond, each keeping a mouthful of air from the air. Their skins took on the afternoon: copper, petrol blue, a green that vanished when the water shifted. Color entered where the wall grew thin. They lodged against the reeds. One pressed another until both curved inward, a common wall neither could cross. What passed between them was only light. Inside, each kept the breath that made it, already cooling; the minute pressure of a world that could survive only by remaining closed. The wind moved them in clusters. From the bank, this looked like belonging. For half the length of the pond they traveled as one trembling thing. Then one burst. The nearest swelled. It received the air, but nothing by which that air could still be known. The water closed at once. Absence had no edge. All afternoon the little company diminished. Copper went violet; violet went black. The walls used themselves up keeping each breath its own. By evening two remained, borne on the same current a hand’s width apart. No reed between them. No wind strong enough to make them meet. They drifted toward the darkening bank. One lost its color, then its border. The other did not turn— there was nowhere else to go. Soon it, too, went black at the crown and disappeared without falling. At dark, the first star appeared in the pond. The water carried it perfectly— and never came near.