Devil’s Lake

One died in Rio in 1987.

There was a dispute about the levitation of mountains.

Neither was it forbidden to look at the sky.

One died in Spain in 1999, wildly innovative

yet there was another flower never to be seen again.

It is time, prop me up.

When the baby picked the plain drum, they knew they’d found the new Dalai Lama.

The city was so beautiful and we were so drunk

we didn’t bother getting off at our bus stop.

One died a number of times so the mourners were all on different schedules.

It’s too bright.

Today was the day I really tried to stay asleep

but the world keeps ending otherwise and variously,

the old professor dies, a black smear upon the waves,

all things ripped apart and our composite, brief forms

achieve at least a comely, uncertain state

like sealife in the clouds, ghost howls, parabolas of chalk.

One was born during a tree-cracking storm.

A shovel scrapes ice from a stone.

Another seemed never to cry,

a change from minor to major chords making the heart soar,

puppet on a stick, quick, exquisite

dance volting through the body like a shout

through water. The daughter wins the swimming medal.

An engagement ring is lost in the grass.

The dog has to be boosted into bed.

What parts are not foreign to the self

which is nothing, an ideology, nostalgia,

wooden cart on a rubble road,

what can’t be shirked, lost, escaped,

must be left behind, released?

And the love story told and told.

Delete.

One was thrown.

One loved lifting logs in the woods after rain

looking for salamanders.

There was a mistake in his name.

One died embracing a faith resisted since childhood.

Was it owed or already paid?

The thing about crocodiles is they hide you

for a week or two because you taste better rotten.

It was the kind of needlework no longer done by hand.

The driver was just a kid.

Today I really tried to stay asleep

but the world keeps et cetera

recommencing.

You know how weak I am.

One clutched his arm at the reception and fell.

One just walked down the railroad tracks.

The night for a moment the shade of cough syrup.

One became the earth she loved, one was revived.