I have seen them in the city, silent plume
and furl beneath a film of water, copper-struck
before the sun goes down. Even entombed in winter,
theirs is always the fluent channel of water,
radius that repeats itself in the basin
by circling from one end to the other.
Their orbit is my same prohibition:
invisible floss tethering me here,
at home yet not at home; hopeless compass,
my foolish apparatus, eternally goading me on.