Back at the lake shore in the sun, third day
Of the holiday weekend, paddle-boarders,
Kayakers, canoeists, the odd motorboat
Careening out on the deep middle of things,
Little toys over canyons that could swallow
Skyscrapers whole and close back over,
Daughter and body swimming in shallows,
Mind entertained and frightened self
By remembering the bleating song
Of the bad guitarist with his blues guitar
At the previous night's garden party, the one
Who tried to praise the healing magic
Of this lake by squeaking, sincerely, "there is
Something in the water. There's something
In the . . . wa . . . ter!" Indeed there is,
And that something is water and nothing
But water, the deep nothing elseness that is
The true leviathan. It lurks in the lake,
Prehistoric monster sturgeon, the lake itself
Being sturgeon home and sturgeon shaped,
But it also runs its teeth and tongue along
The threads of rushing creeks. Yesterday,
Memory reminded self as self played, body
Swam in benign sun, we had watched while
A skinny birch tree over one of those creeks
Was continuously flung up and down,
Rooted helplessly to the bank but undercut,
Its crown tossing like a frightened horse,
Non-stop, at every moment, the water
Smashing and spraying, the crown jerked up
And splashed back down into the foam,
Jerked up and splashed back down, jerked
Up and splashed back down. That had been
Going on for, what, months? Years? Mind
Helpfully supplied, courtesy of brain's cellar
Of black wines, a passage from Sakhalin
Island in translation: "Stunted, sickly trees
Looked down from high up on the bank. . . .
Through long, dreadful nights, each of them
Sways restlessly from side to side, bends
To the ground and creaks in lamentation,
And this lamentation is heard by nobody."
There's something in the water. There's
Something in the water, the water, the water.
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