The Lake is a summer poem, a celebration of warm summer days spent together outside.
The Lake – Summer Poem
All year the dripping sky plunged into the dip In the landscape; light and crystalline Rain had partied there, sketched in by wintering winds. All year it swelled inside the deep cavity. Drops clattered like seashells, water poppies Sloshed veils of yellow rays across the lake. You could spot purple mosquitos and blue dragonflies From the wooden rowing boat we had fixed up Out of scraps one warm day the rain wouldn’t let up In the middle of our summering. Once afloat, We would sky an oar and each stroke into the deep Rippled a fish and rocked a water lily. Within the crutches, the rudders nestled we were Hanging off the beaks of birds inside the mould On the thwart. They would tell us how it is To fly for miles and miles and how plumes want Springing when the long nights floor the early bright. We Could tell the shore was listening even adrift down-lake it Framed the water and the fields beyond and on it We’d lodge our boat for the next day Fire-side until the day, dusk weighed anchor at dawn. Now the clouds were fumettos and The lake was a pop-up book with us in it, the sun A giant reading lamp. We heard how the sand had Beached a fish and stuck on so that the angler threw it Back in and how the bird considered snapping it up Mid-air only to be nudged out of the way by the breeze And how what we said nursed the ladybug many miles Away. On the whitecaps, a grey heron pencilled A map for the catfish and us as far as the slough and Through the cattails and the floating sweet grass of The moor and beyond to where we’d dry off before Going home for iced tea with a slice of lemon. Soon, We’d be falling then wintering before budding and Summering again.
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