The bucket of water distorts
the image of the sky when kicked
a mirror stretching into infinite ovals.

In this I am a golden leaf
and the light stretches through me
a ragged parchment in candle-light.

Where the green shadows
intersect with the love we live
I can see a buried garden-

a lazy, hothouse dream
of terracotta and porcelain
and thieves in the night

that went to sleep under
the shelves of seeds, the
growing and the withered things;

this trap I have set for them,
their cruel hands falter
they are my broken memory

forgetful at dawn's greeting
heavy-eyed and slow-motioned
the ants in the woodpile.

Beneath the hanging bough
and above the mossy  bracken
a camera clicks and finds the gap.

To the side on the left, above the planks
where the anguis fragilis unwind
a watering can, sunbaked, is propped;

brittle as I am and dry as rust,
yet in another land years away
I live and move with these shadows.