And they will gather by the well, its dark water a mirror to catch whatever stars slide by in the slow precession of the skies, the tilting dome of time, over all, a light mist like a scrim, and here and there some clouds that will open at the last and let the moon shine through; it will be at the wheel’s turning, when three zeros stand like paw-prints in the snow; it will be a crescent moon, and it will shine up from the dark water like a silver hook without a fish—until, as we lean closer, swimming up from the well, something dark but glowing, animate, like live coals— it is our own eyes staring up at us, as the moon sets its hook; and they, whose dim shapes are no more than what we will become, take up their long-handled dippers of brass, and one by one, they catch the moon in the cup-shaped bowls, and they raise its floating light to their lips, and with it, they drink back our eyes, burning with desire to see into the gullet of night: each one dips and drinks, and dips, and drinks, until there is only dark water, until there is only the dark.
From The Girl with Bees in Her Hair by Eleanor Rand Wilner. Copyright © 2004 by Eleanor Rand Wilner. Used by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org. All rights reserved.