Thread So Fine

Just Below The Surface
by Jane Hirshfield

Just below the surface, fish, still
In the late afternoon, the sunlight ladders down,
breaking across their bodies' narrow poise.
It is almost a music, the brown unmoving quickness
intersected with gold.
They are, even in sleep, wholly alive and one, a necklace
assembled on thread so fine it is almost surmise.
A first moves, another, and they are gone.
As one lover goes, and, long after, the other;
yet somehow, in another shadow of the same water,
are still there.