Sound is amplified over water. This explains 
the grunts and bellows from the opposite shore: 
 
elephants, perhaps, or some other lumbering
zoo animal crying out for food, or a mate. 
 
That is not what brought me here. Years ago, driving 
past the reservoir en route to the crematorium,
 
I overheard a promise of quiet, whispered
beneath a cloud-wisped sky – and vowed to return. 
 
It's been a decade. Today, the surface ruffles, 
undulates towards the bank in shadowed wavelets 
 
rippling on the rocks with a sing-song that forms
a disparate whole with the ruckus from the zoo. 
 
It calls to mind that hippo, back in '74 – 
Congo was his name – who escaped his keepers 
 
and for fifty-two days, made the reservoir his home, 
passing into legend handed down, down, down
 
to my nine-year-old self, standing on this very shore, 
my parents' hands in mine. I can almost see him, 
 
a single dark glistening blob surfacing 
and resurfacing near some narrow inlet, barely
 
discernible, the waters conspiring to hide
his bulk. As if possessed by a singular will 
 
to elude, evade, slip by the nets; driven to seek 
a paradise lost, where to wish is to be 
 
at once perfectly safe, 
and perfectly free.