Portrait Blended into Water

 I could just stop. He could not.

Some moments, like Bernard Lycett-Kean’s pool
Water, he felt furred, shirred, made a witless
Patchwork of a level plane. Tendencies

He’d always had toward uncertainty
Were magnified as he swam towards them,
Magnified and fractured into small gems

Of equally dangerous decisions
About which his thoughts could only pretend
To him that he might make the correct choice.

The waves of a bright body of water
Had often reminded him of a board
On which ineffable Go masters played

A game too simple in its rules for them
To ever fully understand, thus grand.
He would stand, looking out over small waves,

Unsteady as always, feeling sanguine,
Knowing he was about to lose this game
By making more or less the same mistakes

He had made in all his previous games,
Which had brought him to this moment staring
Into this fresh set of dissembling days.