She contemplates her mirror-self, dead still
the afternoon air. No grasshoppers sing.
Lake limpid, a bowl of blue glass, a womb
too cold to swim. Volcano collapsed.
On the water’s surface, foliage floats
like debris in the fluid of an eye.
Below, tiny crustaceans sieve the depths,
diaphanous as foetuses, feeding.
She is lost to me, inhabits some new
element, a place inconceivable
to a metaphor mind. One breath will affirm
her long fall from this dream into another.
