"I dare to walk in this water, but not when I am angry."

It hurries across my ankles. The checkerboard bottom shines

Raggedly when I drop my eyes, but I do not try not to think.

I am singing a long unlikely story, a ripple of surprises,

Things I never knew to happen. Though I have read story-books

And looked out castle-windows, I do not like to be laughed at.

I speak interrupting my own delight, and break my prose

With the song, skimming and foolish, sometimes so beautiful

I do not know who I am, what curling of air is like waterflow

Across blue glass, then green, then green-yellow glass.

The story must not end, but it splashes into my head always

From somewhere, and I float out on my voice with its words,

With its pictures I can't draw yet when I am drawing pictures,

People's names, bobbing end-up in the shallow clear flood,

Drifts of clothes and shoes I outgrew, all weightless, all

Whirling like glass bowls in a glass bowl too big to have a rim.

I am at the other side now, and did not stumble on anger

And drown screaming in that hole where it is too deep to sing.

It is the end of the day, carpet-edge, the other side of the hall,

A field with barns and buttercups, and I can let the story end,

Except for some of the singing, as if I am remembering it,

When I sit down on this grass to rest from walking in water.