After Tim Lilburn’s “Slow World”
The lake is a woman who no longer
looks in the mirror. She lets her beard bristle,
forced to overhear strangers rowing their boats.
The lake breeds black bass in basements of muck, keeps armies
of frogs in the coves. Sometimes
the lake chokes in her sleep, waking
to bullfrogs, leopard frogs and green frogs.
Leeches, pickerel, northern pike. All her loves
circle her waist. Though no longer
the chorus frogs, whom she laments.
In the middle, Sea-Doos, speedboats, tumble the lake,
carve up the waves. Late July, Montreal halts for two weeks.
Police patrol shorelines.
There’s a ferry to Oka all day.
Near the shore, muskrat and foxes.
Female mallards sit in the trees.
Maple keys shrug
at the lake’s hem. She no longer keeps track.
Holy water and toxins, black-patent tadpoles
with prominent eyes. Thunderstorms
from the west. Decoys and guns in the fall.
Once, barges for pelts and coniferous logs.
Once, food smuggled on powerboats
for the Mohawk behind the blockade.
Beyond old,
she turns ragged blue in high wind.
Always heading somewhere downstream:
Lachine, Lac St. Louis, the St. Lawrence,
Montreal. Nearby, bordering the town of Ste.-Anne-de-Bellevue,
Mafiosi inhabit their fortified homes.
Mid-century, the chorus frogs abandoned the lake:
harsh cold, the Seaway, fertilizers, tailings,
a factory upstream. Their skin tinged
a greyish-green tan,
their rapturous piping, utterly lost.