An Old Poem Completely Revamped (and the namesake for this blog)

Bottomless Lakes

Lost Lake last dock
gap toothed ladder
descending to nowhere
to the deep center
lily pad abandoned
to time’s steady whittle
behind man-high stalks of weeds
I found you out
the day the rain sounded like waves
and leukemia sounded like dying

I wanted to believe
in your calm disintegration
your secret music
in the alcove of cattails
the bullfrog song
percussion of waves
the viola creak of your bones
underfoot that sound stretched forever
my forgotten walk-on-water

in dream you are a drowned piano
shadow slat keys and ivory bars of light
I sit in the bow of the broken rowboat
begin to finger out your song
we sink
through curtains of weeds
motors become a bee hum
fish sing a mezzo hymn
and we are not afraid of the dark
closing over us
down down
through the swirl of silt
muck and fish bones
into the endless bed of mud
your notes hold me
I find my own breath
and when the mire opens
a place below lakes
where all sinking things go
where all water is one water