Mid-summer, the lake stares down the sun and the sky,
what was once thought of
as heaven.
A hot lazy raft rocks its complaints twenty feet from shore.
In the afternoon haze sadness
loses all definition. The sun
is another country, a martyrdom
of touch.
At forty-five degrees
the air congeals, props up trees,
human bodies, houses, erratic stones.
The heat lowers
onto the lake’s lassitude,
its small worn-out wrinkles.
It hardly breathes.
Fish bloat on the surface, loll their bellies,
wash ashore, pallid, appear,
disappear between rocks.
The lake prays to Oka’s two highest hills,
their rolling loft, unseen from the south.
June bugs pierce the dazed hearing world.
Words abandon flesh. Chokecherries,
reeds, milkweed froth the lake’s shore.
The shoreline slowly recedes,
beginning to shrink, the lake rising
in droplets, almost nothingness,
on its way into the sky.