Men Nearing Shelter

1.
What was it
about the fountain women
les phantoms du fonte
of whom their shapes were cast
(in inky lead, as if metal were
the matter to address);

had been cast, as the actor,
or the fishhook dangling
just beneath the surface.

"This simply ain't
no place to fish,"
had said Drake
over morning coffee. 

2.
Of course Robert did not listen
he who believes less and less
to know a thing is
to touch it.
Rather to move on is
to have trod upon;
no other way.