Cold Knap Lake

Question 1

Blue-lipped

Answer 1

and dressed on water’s long green silk she lay for dead.

Question 2

my mother

Answer 2

gave a stranger’s child her breath. The crowd stood silent, drawn by the dread of it.

Question 3

The child

Answer 3

breathed bleating and rosy in my mother’s hands

Question 4

Was I there

Answer 4

or is that troubled surface something else shadowy under the dipped fingers of willows

Question 5

All things

Answer 5

lie under closing water in that lake with the poor man’s daughter.