Night was woven through with what we said,
a Persian rug, patterned with random stars.
We sat on the windowsill of a ruined
farmhouse, all of us quiet after talking.
Weeds lay tangled below, a great square
of something intricate, unknown,
and I thought how it could be caught
by four corners: a carpet lifted
into the dark, undulating up and up.
I might have been pulled into the blue-black,
too high, too far, but something called me
back. Yesterday, kayaking, I recalled it
near a silver stretch where herons gather
at low tide. Just beyond,
water runs deeper, faster, the eel grass
slowly brushed this way and that, farther
down. We'd paddled back the wrong way,
though I liked the shallows and then
the cool green deeps. There, before us, birds
ascended as if drawing something
with them, the sheen of water, a wavering
transparency. We could see the slant
of fields, scattered houses and barns,
orange buoys comically bobbing,
and currents opening to reveal,
lower down, many liquid stairways.
Copyright © 2003 Anne Simpson
