Narcissus at the pier

the dissolution of a vain man

With the streetlights the city raises
its precise facades above the waterline
and dissolves in the organic
root world below

he glides along the pier
the aborted stem
shrinking with his shadow.

he has discarded his history,
swollen with metaphor,
among scattered women
growing in the telling.

he is small in the water;
the tiny figure you never saw
in Van Gough's sky