The brown sheet tangled with the wind flutters for a mile
lapping at my ankles a hungry dog of a lake
hush-whispered calling for my orange red toes to lift
launching from the squelching mud of my own young earth
And they do

For an isolated heaven of pine tree loneness
singing in the dropping July sun among unborn waves
Now I stroke

Contemplating its untouched bowers
through the splashing eyes of water
eyes squinting above a nostril wetness

My hands thrust out and pull the island to me
The dreary staleness of unmotion
I kick behind me with wild-horse legs

Half way now I pause          dropping vertical
and turn absorbing the panorama
of the domed world’s undreaming beingness

god-breathed          wind-twisted        waves
are rising       burgeoning hunger      for motion

But I could wait      rising                     falling
falling         rising              rising      falling
until muscles lock and I am only
falling

I could make new eyes
                                                                of the spirit
the spirit of the lake                  my new self
A legend a myth
haunting the brown depths            rising in darkness
hovering above the surface            unvisceral
a new pagan god                               without worshipers

Into the vacant ears of sleeping campers
I’ll birth dreams of blood and human sacrifice
delighting them with short-lived escape
from their suburban terrors

Or I’ll scan the black bottom of waters
in a catfish form             whiskered and cynical
prolonging the mystery in submarine feeding
on the refuse and off-scouring
of an alien and thankless world

But no                not yet
I turn from those gleeful visions and

I turn into the whipping surface repeating
the elemental movement
saving metamorphosis for another day

Now the sheeted sail-clouds journey with me
Now my secret self is smiling
Now the lake is moving under me
Now my life is aimed and ignited
The wind is greeting my arrival
The past is swelling in song
The bridge nearby is stretching in approval
The birds are circling my island
Now my feet are touching earth
Now I am spilling water off my flesh
Now I am wrapped up in the breath of God
Now I am living

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