NO TWO WAYS

There’s no two ways about it:

the man you thought you knew

is dead, speared in the back

by an old friend who just paused

to watch his own reflection spoil

the lake. You were a golden koi,

carrying the weight of the sunlight

on your back, cutting the water

like a dream, unaware of the face

that hung like a blank moon over you,

worrying the spawn and the gunk

of the pond with a forked twig.

Now your boots sink into the mud

and the water clouds, heavy with

the fullness of the sky, the winter.

The frozen glass, dusted white, leaves

a well the size of a breakfast bowl

which you fill with your face and sit

a while; the twig becomes a spear,

and the man you thought you knew

lies washed-out, belly-up on the bank.

Too late to throw him back now;

there’s no two ways about it.