Beside the Reservoir
by Philip Gross
from The Ice Factory, Faber
A surface still as ________. Drystone masonry
runs straight in, ________. There is no other shore
but a thin ________ of mist. One tree
stoops, waist-deep. At the ________ thud of a door
the gulls ________ upwards briefly. By the car
two figures stand as if ________. Once
they would have ________, talked, troubling to share
this ________ distance. Now, he points
to bird-flecks drifting far out: a precarious
species, ________ visitors. She takes his arm,
keeps ________, through certain silences
accepted like the need for water, for the ________farm.