Читать книгу The Folded Heart - Michael Collier - Страница 11

Skimming

It was nothing more than a summer job,

hopping the low fence to my neighbor’s house,

where I paid out the long hollow pole

through my hands, and dipped the skimmer’s

blue jaw into the pool to strain

the insect wings, bird feathers

and carob leaves that lay like the night’s

siftings on a huge blue mirror.

Evenings from our patio next door,

I heard my neighbors thrashing

in the shallow end, their voices

wild in the cool element, their feet

padding heavily over the concrete deck.

And later, in darkness, they slipped back

into the green water silently.

The yellow glow of the citronella candle

flickering far away through the oleanders.

Its oily lemon fragrance heavy in the air. Sometimes I heard the woman crying, sometimes the man, and once I heard a gasp

as dry and sharp and loud as someone

taking a last breath before he drowns.

Some mornings I’d find the pool light

burning faintly in the deep end,

the surface covered with all that was attracted

to the submerged glow, and once I found

a bat floating in the shallow pocket

of the stairs. Its wings spread out

like a Gothic W. Its feet angling

from its belly like a ship’s screws.

And lifting the black mass gently from the water,

turning the skimmer over in the grass,

I tapped the bat out and let it lie face up

in the morning sun. Its features

like a rubber mask’s, reddish, roughened,

as if its passage out of the attic or cave

had been difficult and the twilight air

of the neighborhood provided nothing more

than blue shadow on blue shadow.