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​Sinking Beneath the Falls

Out on the county edge, the trailer homes
are sprinkled out like downtown dandruff, few
and fewer as I drive still deeper in
the rolling woods that line the darkest vein
of road to the extremities of green
and heavy silence. Then the road dissolves
to dirt and ends within black trees, so I

proceed on foot and follow trails of those
who curled around the woods before and left
the quiet deaths of stomping grasses in
their seeking wake. The trail takes me into
the mountain depths until I find the falls.
I hear the roar before my eyes can catch
a million drops churned white and thrown over

the cliff above. A great frenzied display,
but on this side, the pool is calm and black
and when I bend to see what lives below
that perfect skin, it only gives me back
my own reflection, blank echoes, this self
of water. As I slip my boots off and
I shed my coat, I find I want to know her,
the self beneath the surface, want to feel
the floating hair pass through my fingers, want

to sink under my own bewitching weight.