They were part of the life of an old doctor
who lived there, alone in a cut-limestone house
set back from the road. I was there only once,
as a child, and my father had lifted me up
to the sandy stone lip of a bottomless well
brimming with water ice-cold to my fingers,
and held me to keep me from falling
as I peered down into the goldfish, circling
and circling, halfway up out of the darkness,
all of us circling, though I could not have known
it in those days, the goldfish trailing their silks,
the white-headed old doctor, and me as a child
with my hands on the edge, looking down,
my father behind me, not letting go.