The Water Lines
See – across the pale bright stream, above the water line,
a small tree bends, its branches moving bare against a spring-clear sky.
Below, its darker twin,
conjoined at water’s edge where tree base touches blacker base.
Branches, thus reflected into searching roots,
finger water as it flows.
In depths they shiver,
reaching further than their airy twins above.
These curious roots below the water line descend,
they stir the ooze of older times,
disturb and trouble memory,
dredge up old things, corrupt and rusted.
Just as the iceberg holds unseen, unknown,
below the water line, its vast and occult store of frozen motion,
so flowing histories are stopped, encrusted,
hidden under weed and mud.
Above, bare branches sprout and sprig with feathered shoots
probe the lucid reaches of the sky.
The twins that lie below embrace a darker treasure,
ancient dragon hoards of mould,
kept forever, sealed below the water line.
Chris Michaelides was born in a village that gradually became an outer London suburb. She now lives in as small and remote a village in East Anglia as is compatible with the daily journey to work. Music and time to look around are precious.