Shallow Lake

July 13 2012

At 3000 feet

the ocean is dead black.

Entire lives
gliding through this vast aquatic space
knowing nothing of light. 

As if the sun had departed, the planet gone dark,

in an exhausted cosmos

of burned-out stars.

But here, in this shallow lake

light filters all the way down.

Where an even layer of silt

lies undisturbed,

over waterlogged trees

becalmed rocks,

the pollen of countless springs.

It looks like an ancient ruin

through the green pelagic murk,

as well-preserved

as Atlantis, Pompeii.

Submerged plants

like some grotesque alien flora

strive sunward

on long exotic stems.

Bend back, parting

from the water I displace

trawling the bottom

holding my breath.

Where a cool layer rests,

persisting

in this heat-wave summer

like a remnant

of a long expired ice-age.

And I dive, again

all the way down

into bracing cold.

Reach out, and touch,

watch ancient silt

billowing up

from the muck and mush

of this soft-bottom warm-water lake.

I think of dust

on the lunar surface,

so finely preserved

for so long

until now.

Just 10 feet down

and I am Apollo.

Or the first explorer

of a dark continent

never seen by man.

Or an astronaut

in low gravity

and inhospitable air,

venturing out

on a strange green planet

circling a distant sun.

I like the way this poem moves on an imaginative trip through space and time. It goes from dark to light, from ice age to space-age, from claustrophobic dive to hypothetical cosmos, and from ancient ruins to a new continent.

I like the sense of this alien and timeless landscape, as close as a few feet down.

I like the depiction of man as intruder, who interferes, thoughtlessly and irrevocably changing things.

Quite a trip for a casual swim and a short dive!