He’s down there somewhere, browsing the pond floor’s
ghostly weeds, twitching off
their coats of green slime in a green cloud.
Even the goggle-eyed fish don’t see him.
But I saw him, whoever he was.
A silhouette of a distant
black-breasted Viking ship
on the water’s mirror, darkening,
whose carved head glistened a thousand years
north of here this morning, but now
hung brooding over his capsized twin,
joined at the water line.
--Then a flash as beak struck down
into shadow beak, and both of him
went draining away dead center
in a hoop of light, rippling out
toward all shores of the pond.
One flattened radio wave
that carried no music, and no news
except that he had been there.
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