Robert Hunter “The Pool”: What is Hiding in the Text

This poem is available at… http://www.hunterarchive.com/files/Poetry/Sentinel.html#s12

This poem is clever in the sense that it plays the metaphor of looking into a pond/puddle but goes a little deeper.  The first stanza I get the image of a young man seeing wrinkles (ripples) go over his face which “it will in time contain”.
The second stanza reminds me that you wear your thoughts on your face. By looking deep into the pool the writer is sharing his thoughts  without the pools consent.  The third stanza talks about the pool seemingly beeing a living metaphor, which are the lines that drew me to this poem. There are several poems regarding looking into a reflection, this poem seems to be a reflection of all those poems, or at least a realization that their is a draw for many poets to ‘reflect’ when they write.

Stanza four the metaphor goes on. It speaks of seeking to go deeper into the reflection to see what is hiding. But he only finds that the answer is ‘open ended’, it seems to be in the eye of the beholder and that it often can never be concluded because the pieces of the puzzle are ever changing, especially the last piece.

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