BARBARA F. LEFCOWITZ
The Pool

Once again a canvas patch
conceals the drained pool's
blue-green oval
as if it were an injured eye
whose own lid would not suffice

though in its own way it's capable
of fending off dust and grit, the chill
that would stiffen its sclerotic coat
freeze the retinal screen
on which summers replay themselves,

kids clinging to long yellow snakes,
swandivers in peacock trunks,
those who tread water
those who splash it in passing faces.
The closer winter's approach,

feathers of ice spreading to plumes
on the canvas patch, the further back
the dreaming pool will reach -
to a time when it was not yet a pool
but another hollow dug in the earth

exposing bones and cups, the tongue of a shoe.
With the deep snows that make
the canvas sag, diminishing
whatever light there may be,
dreams become more opaque

with only faint outlines
of an ancient struggle, causes, names,
effects so long forgotten it's an open
invitation to myth -
contrary to late spring's ritual opening

of that lid, the one-eyed pool
doomed to squint and stare at the flat sky,
feet of swimmers pounding its acrid fluids,
chlorine stinging
all its invisible inner folds.