I liked the sinister look of you - we all did - and I was
left alone to play on your
banks.
My parents talked and talked and looked into the black lake.
Perhaps they swam
through you - though I never saw wet footprints in their bedroom.
I was happiest by the white water, listening to divers
who had come up for good, afraid of strange bubbles in their blood.
In the desert, you went underground, beneath the spines
of the upright.
The rivers disappeared into red sandstone.
Ignorant of you, the women turned into pillars of
salt, telling each other that their daughters would be fine,
fine, just fine.
Your harbour is big enough for all the navies of the world.
Here on the hillside, I watch your surface change.
On such a flat summer day, the
children move across you in bright kayaks. Their lifejackets
are new and their feet are dry. They yearn for your depths,
and they ache for sudden storms.
In the sky behind them, their wish is taking shape.
The tap pinked into
a tin tacked to
a joist. Just so, he
said, your kitchen.
The table's back there.
No, I said, no
and pulled back. But he
was gone - a
puff of smoke or an
echo of ash
behind the slammed door,
a mutter of
soot on a dead fire
- my last re-
collection of the
sound of blue.