Epektasis

At Eliburn reservoir
you arrived again —
blue unfastened from the air,
a bright wound of motion.

You took the alder branch
above the bridge pool,
body angled darkward,
poised at the thin hinge
between surface and depth.

Stillness gathered;
even water listened.

I thought of my grandmother —
the quiet way she laid bird cards
along the table’s edge,
aligning them,
as if order itself were prayer.

Now she has gone beyond
the last mapped water,
past current and name,
leaving a pale hollow
where evening pools.

You tipped.
The light narrowed.
Then the fall —
pure angle,
a silver breach
in the skin of the world.

I stood cold-breathed,
rooted to the bank.
You returned with silver in your beak,
struck the branch,
and the pool sealed.

For an instant
the border thinned —
enough to feel
another silence
press through.

Then you were gone.
Only widening rings,
the branch easing back to stillness.

Yet something remained —
not message, not ghost,
but the afterheat of looking,
as if the water
had briefly learnt to see.