You
The sunlight passes through the window into the room
Where you are sewing a button to your blouse: outside
Water in the fountain rises
Toward a cloud. This plume of water is lighter
Now, for white shares of itself are falling back
Toward the ground.
This water does succeed, like us,
In nearing a perfect exhaustion,
Which is its origin. The water
Succeeds in leaving the ground but
It fails at its desire to reach a cloud. It pauses,
Falling back into its blue trough; of course,
Another climb is inevitable, and this loud, falling
Water is a figure for love, not loss, and
Still heavy with its desire to be the cloud.
Norman Dubie
from Selected and New Poems