OPHELIA
I TOO, seeking the water of life
came to the river among the willows, the unpollarded old willows with split trunks and the scarlet and yellow saplings on the banks.
Among reeds and mint, iris and loosetrife, I, like all thirsty creatures, stood in the shallows.
Patterns of shadow, water darkening, swirl round my feet as cold as stone. The purple flowers drag in the eddies, but the deeper river where the water steadies into a purposeful current, field forsaking, escaping under shadows, to the sea is gone.
My shadow only, only the trees shade lie on the water, in the same place stay.
The river moves, hurrying from what spring to what estuary?—ceaseless and passing under still shadows trees and I have made.
We watch the changeless shape while it still slides away.
URSULA WOOD.
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