In the pond in the park 
all things are doubled:
Long buildings hang and 
wriggle gently. Chimneys 
are bent legs bouncing 
on clouds below. A flag 
wags like a fishhook 
down there in the sky.

The arched stone bridge 
is an eye, with underlid 
in the water. In its lens 
dip crinkled heads with hats 
that don't fall off. Dogs go by, 
barking on their backs. 
A baby, taken to feed the 
ducks, dangles upside-down, 
a pink balloon for a buoy.

Treetops deploy a haze of 
cherry bloom for roots, 
where birds coast belly-up 
in the glass bowl of a hill; 
from its bottom a bunch 
of peanut-munching children 
is suspended by their 
sneakers, waveringly.

A swan, with twin necks 
forming the figure 3, 
steers between two dimpled 
towers doubled. Fondly 
hissing, she kisses herself, 
and all the scene is troubled:
water-windows splinter, 
tree-limbs tangle, the bridge 
folds like a fan.

(Johnson, VT)

At night the river,

            frozen over, fits



its bed like a key

            its lock. The current



keeps turning but

            the surface won’t



open. I can

            hear ice click, shift,



its crystalline pins

            caught. Twenty miles south



of Lake Eden,

            its origin,



the Gihon’s near its end.

            After the old red mill,



before it enters

            the Lamoille, it falls



flat, a closed

            door. Wrong key



in the wrong lock,

            I like to put



my mind where two worlds

            meet & agree to



disagree. The teachers

            say : take up the water,



make it your body

            & mind, make it thought.



But I think I

            must think the way

elements make

            temporary



arrangements

            with weather :



hydrogen locked

            to oxygen,



each strong molecule

            expands, a lattice



of tetrahedrons.

            All their new shapes make



ephemeral color

            the way what light there is



at midnight heightens

            ice, brighter briefly



than snow. & toward

            that whiteness my mind



pushes outward from

            the interior



where olivine water

            washes over gravel



& sand. Thought

            exerts drag



against the icy

            underside, & I



feel a border

            experience



can’t cross over

            into knowledge



the way in front

            of paradox



my mind stops :

            for five years

my ill body killed me

            while it kept me alive.



On the bank bare

            brambles catch snow



weighted with rain

            that falls straight down,



hissing as it hits

            the ice. Who am I



now. Above : mountains.

            Below : the river.



Both moving & still,

            inaccessible



& everywhere, being

            is & keeps to itself,



hidden in emblems

            of the outward, seeds



extracted from bracts

            of a dry pine cone.



The spring equinox

            is near : rain coaxes



the icy lattices

            to relax into lapse,



little cracks

            mid-river.



It’s so quiet

            I hardly feel



desire. But its soft force

            flenses the strongest water



from thaw : there, at

            the thinnest brink,



kinesis that

            resists stillness,

thinking on thinking,

            the current pulses.