Читать книгу Post- - Wayne Miller - Страница 13

THE FIRST YEAR

1

The new parents rose

to throw stone after stone

into the pond. The moonlight

barely touched them.

The surface erupted with sound

every time it was breached.

All those stones planted

in that pressurized dark

at the bottom of the pond,

the temperature dropping,

the water beginning to ice.

When the first stone hit

and didn’t sink

they stopped their throwing

to observe the stone

still with them in the silent air.

2

Meanwhile, indiscernibly,

the water was draining

through a buried system

of pipes. They tossed their stones

onto the ice; each skittered

to an unreachable place.

That long winter,

the ice covered with stones

kept lowering—until at last

it rested on the mud

and the stones they’d thrown

those months ago. Then

the sun began to rise,

and the ice began to melt,

and it was spring.