Shadows of You

Imagine looking down into a river,
there watching the reflections change,
the shadows creeping round towards the evening,
the sun's rays skipping purl to purl.
You begin to feel the chill, but still you stay to watch.
The people on the other bank
are puckered and inverted in the flow,
the ponies in the field will jump no more today.
But now it's really cold and you should go.
Yet still you cannot tear yourself away,
must stay a bit to watch the surface cloud.
At first you think it's semen that's been spilt,
a milky gloss or glaze, uneven at the start,
but slowly thinning as it creeps and evens out.

The images are losing clarity,
you stare but cannot grasp what they're about,
they blur beneath the ice, the movement's frozen out
as surely as the images are frozen in.
You look down at yourself, immobilised,
serene. It's you, as if you had been drawn
on blotting pads. The shapes of you are neither
there nor not. The edges that define you are erased.
The river's memory is dimming as your own.
It's throwing out some hints on what's to come.