Advice to a Pool

Be a liquid threshold for the dawn And let night touch you with his back. The earth-bowl prisoning you, and cold night winds

Are only pause and rhythm Within an endless fantasy, But you, like they, can be A dream from the loins of a dream, And build a golden stairway of escape.

O coolly unperturbed pool, Slap your ripples in laughter at men, Who splash you with their lordly hands. Time is but a phantom dagger That motion lifts to slay itself.

Maxwell Bodenheim

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Be a liquid for the dawn
And let night you with his back.
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