The Lake
The wavelets of the lake pat against
your ankles, like a wagging soggy dog
ready to shake and ecstatic to discover
a wet coat's ability to cause absolute chaos.
But your dog is not here
and I am no such constant companion.
A blue heron stalks through weeds
before the drop-off, before the subtle bank
plunges down into the old mine shaft,
filled over the decades, tunnels glugging
with the aching machinations of imagined
writhing eels. Her bent knobby knees
tell of your future. When she takes off
and bats slow spirals to get over the trees
you hold onto your hat and tell me
why you will always be going in circles
over a tunnel of dappled light
and pond muck and corroded depths.
I kiss your cheekbones and your brow
trying to become comfort,
soothing like soft water and moss,
and say it isn't so. But I have always
been a terrible liar. The woods know it
and call me out; the light knows it
and tries to catch you in a hammock strung
with sunbeams.
The sky shifts in a fibonacci sequence,
in light and shadow, making new freckles
across our faces. Time is a nautilus.
We are stuck within its shell;
the constant swish of ocean will never
leave our ears, never touch our tongues.
We hurt for the sting of honest salt.
It is easy to scratch our wounds and forget them;
our scraped selves are wrapped
in the poultice of the woods.
We walk in circles so we do not have to leave,
like the fish in the lake and the great human bird
above it, like the spirals of light;
we will scatter to the open sun and wind,
and disappear.
