We Gaze Together into This

I’d like to say ‘distorting’
mirror but it’s simply what it is:
as darkly lucid as a sphagnum pool,

a sudden manhole-sized disclosure
of the bog’s truth: nothing in the end
will hold our weight, words least of all –

those offerings, those grave-goods
glinting once or twice, gold-sepia, before
into the dark we go,

we both, together, like our gazes after it.
Into the peat-water, its suspended
rust, the age of iron

in solution, colour of dried blood.

On the Shores of Lake Aphasia

mist seeps upwards, early morning, in fine strands
like milk in water. Almost Japanese.

In some Zen light, or Pure Land,
we might see it so:
the more
white paper, the more eloquent;
silence
measuring the distance between this and this.