You buried your face in the seine’s laces
and squinted at the reasons for our losses.
They blanketed you. One might say the seine
became a figure for the weight of sin.
One might say it was merely an old net.
Waterlogged, was it heavier than night?
Heavier than a body, waterlogged?
The pollywogs in its folds were hind-legged.
They seemed to you quite incidental.
One’s tail was replaced with the absence of tail.
Sutured the seine as a doctor would a thigh,
one imagines. Didn’t you use zip-ties, though?