I do some of my best thinking
when standing on the bottom of a lake,
up to my chin in lake water.
I like squinting down the length of it
or staring up at the violet sky.
I don’t care if my head looks
like a beachball from the shore,
as long as the lake water holds me up
and I keep my balance with extended arms.
One morning, standing in Lake Ontario,
I could remember no greater happiness.
Unable to contain this feeling, I took
a step and for a moment I was beside myself.
This kind of thing can go on for some time,
thoughts running around my head
like a stampede of antelopes
only sometimes, one of the young stumbles,
and is set upon by a pack of cheetahs.
This is the doomsayer thought
about the future, the lake drying up
and leaving me abandoned, or rising
above its banks to inundate me.
Such are the two most basic human fears,
as if both could not occur at once,
as they do when I dream that I am both
alone and being smothered by a dozen women.
Meanwhile, swimmers swim by
on their way to sunbathe on a raft,
a speedboat lifts me a little in its wake—
all part of life when you are half afloat
and half bouncing off the sandy floor with your toes.
And I’m far enough from shore not to hear
the shouts of foreboding and calamity.
I know the end is near. Seawater
will rise and flood the aquifers,
the basement sofa will begin to float.
So hard to picture it from here, though,
what with the sentinel pines along the shoreline
and just enough water to fill the lake exactly to the brim.