New Decade, Embarcadero

At the surface of things

loose cupped hands comb

water through spaces

between fingers. Talk

but do not plunge the arm in deep—

cold to the elbow—No

you are civilized; Stay aloft

at the surface. Fingernails click

at the lacquered tabletop, the talk:

only a gentle disturbance to the deep

green pond beneath.

If you tore the lid off,

would there be many eels? Or one

thick-bodied fish, spotted and slow,

a jeweled box guarded by a gate?

At the surface of things

the new year is turning,

clicking over

while some thousand bodies shout at it—

edge of a number

and not so arbitrary edge

of land and bridges sparkling loudly into night.

You are the grand cog shifting

in the pond’s very bottom.

Together make the marker

of change to guard against

otherwise—fear that every moment

is in fact the same.