Contained

Oct 15 2015

The lake is dark glass,

absorbing the light

it used to reflect.

The way parched soil

soaks-up rain

as if it never fell;

hardpan earth

bottomless lake.

An overcast day

and the lake is exquisitely still;

its flat surface

an inscrutable mask

an eyeless face.

While underneath

small fish

silently slip

from out of the murk,

only to vanish

with an effortless flick.

The weight of water

to the silty bottom

retains its August heat.

But it will cool, day-by-day.

First a skim of ice

then a thin continuous layer.

That will harden, thicken, sit,

sealing-in the lake

for the duration of winter;

invisible

beneath its burden of snow.

Where vegetation is dormant

in the absence of light,

and fish still swim

contained by ice.

A zero-sum game

of predator and prey,

who graze, scavenge, mate

hunt, and fight.

A closed system

in perpetual night;

feeding on its waste

sustaining itself.

I like the idea of a self-contained ecosystem: with all life's diversity and complexity, and no less of its intensity and struggle for survival.

And I like the idea of an alien world existing beneath our feet: out of sight, out of mind. The winter lake might as well be a water-world beneath the frozen surface of one of Jupiter's moons, an exotic body of liquid water where some day extra-terrestrial life may be first discovered.

In winter, the lake is absent from our consciousness: reduced to a frozen surface covered in snow, just like everything else; a convenient shortcut to the other side. Although the poem didn't begin with visions of winter. It began as a purely descriptive piece: one thinks of glass as reflective; yet this smooth glassy surface is almost black, absorbing what little light there is on an overcast day. The trouble with purely descriptive pieces is that they're more exercise than poem: readers are going to stick with pretty or inventive descriptions for only so long. I think a poem needs some narrative drive; it has to tell at least some kind of story. So from there, I thought about the fish as it gets colder: kind of like the proverbial frog in the pot of water that's slowly brought to a boil. Except here, the fish are adapted to cold; they continue to methodically go about their business, undisturbed. Then I went from cold to freeze-up, when the lake is literally locked-in: a closed self-sustaining system; no energy in, and very little out.

Poems about fish. There seem to be a lot of them; almost as many as dogs and deer!