Advice To A Pool Poem by Maxwell Bodenheim

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.