Ciò che si ripete

The water in the canal this morning held two skies — the one above, which moved with clouds, and the one below, which moved differently, as though the reflection remembers the sky a half-breath late, always late, always almost. I have drawn reflections for fifty years and I do not yet understand the delay. Perhaps it is not delay. Perhaps the water sees what the air has already forgotten. Forse l’acqua è più onesta del cielo. The hand that cannot now hold a brush without the trembling still knows — here, in the wrist — the angle at which light enters water and does not return the same. What enters is white. What returns is the color of whatever the water has been thinking. I sat until the clouds changed. The second sky changed after.