It was like standing in the midst of a city park with a friend who shows you that if you stare too long at an artificial waterfall, then look away, the waterfall will suddenly start to rush not down, but up.
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It was like discovering how to make the waterfall rush in reverse and then standing there making it happen over and over, staring too long at the waterfall rushing down, and then rushed back up by your will.
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It was like willing the artificial waterfall to rush back up in the midst of the city park in the midst of the city, crisscrossed with concrete fences constructed to look like wood, all constructed of will.
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It was like dreaming that night of the waterfall in winter, surrounded by silver skyscrapers, halted by cold in its downward rush, a torrent of icicles, neither rushing up nor rushing down, impervious to will.
Donna Stonecipher is the author of three books of poems, most recently The Cosmopolitan (2008, winner of the National Poetry Series). A fourth, Model City, is forthcoming from Shearsman in 2015. She lives in Berlin.