Epektasis

The reservoir gives first
at the edges—
ice unseaming, grain by grain,
until a dull lip of water
shows.

Cold light skims the surface.
A gray sheet shivers,
carrying broken sky
in pieces
that won’t hold still.

Mist pulls itself up
from the bank,
dragging the smell of thaw,
of last week’s leaves
gone sour.

Then swans:
white bodies
cutting the dark
into long, clean strokes.

No hurry.
Not ceremony either.
Just weight
placed carefully
on water.

Behind them, the young
try the air—
judge wrong,
drop hard,
start again,

practice
masquerading as flight.

Cormorants climb the posts
and open their black wings
like damp pages,
hold them to the thin sun—
waiting
for warmth
that rarely signs.

We throw crumbs.

They land wrong—
too big, too small—
yet hunger answers anyway:
a rush of bodies,
feet slapping water,
noise scarring quiet

until the surface closes
over it
as if nothing happened.

From skeletal trees
squirrels descend
fast as mistakes,
slip once,
catch,

tightrope the rail
for one seed,
one mouthful,
risk
for the simplest thing.

The bench is wet.
Paint lifts at the corners.
The pier sags—
boards dark with old rain,

everything here
wearing down
in its own time.

A few buds open early,
soft, pale—
already burned
at the tips.

Still the soil shifts,
slow and patient,
lifting what it can
without promise.

People pass,
collars up,
hands buried.

Breath gathers,
then disappears.

Footsteps scrape gravel—
not prayer,
just moving on.

At the center
the ice gives
with a quiet tearing—

water moving again,
not holy,
not healed,
just heavy,

pulling itself forward
because it must.

Fog closes the distance.
Houses blur.
Trees flatten
into their own shadow.

The world becomes
small enough
to hold.

For a moment
no one speaks.

No one takes
anything.

Only water
working its way through,
the ache in cold fingers,

and the plain fact:
standing here,
still breathing,
still here.