Water Pail

The little metal water pail is old and battered.
Flocks of spots in paint like birds adorn it.
The handle squalls and complains in tones of some hell.
That thin grey arc.
By which one lifts the whole affair.
A rainbow whose hues have been drained into time.

Look inside, it’s empty, too.
But the sacred ghosts of dreams are swarming there.
Ensconced within such regular curves.
The empty spaces.
And the wrinkles time has kicked in them.

Shining inside the dead and unborn.
Never slipping, always stormy.
Reflections too perfect to be present.
Hinted at in sections conic; tin, and humble.
Eternal water’s simplest doors.