A child, said Mrs. God.
Must I? In some respects
foreknowledge was unbearable.
To wonder also meant to hope.

She tried then to imagine
a living spring
in the bed of a northern river:
what would someday be the Brule
in a place called Wisconsin
before that, too, passed away.

The spring looked like a small knot
in the sand, continuously loosened
by unseen forces, by many
invisible fingers,
small and restless as a baby’s.

Water had a set of customs
within which incredible variation
took place. It was like
the flickering of starlight.

Perhaps there is no future,
and the mysterious unfolding
of the spring is all I can
truly be sure of, Mrs. God thought,
then in her ninth month.