A lake is a dangerous way to be. Fresh suns
assault your surface every day with new
orthogonal commands of light, with facts
too numinous and vague to puncture through,
and you, lake, you must prove them inexact.
Each morning you conspire to visit me
with wave and wave and wave of tenderness
and silences that chatter and dissolve
on temporary edges of themselves.
You sidle close to me at night beside
the shore, and in your high tide you confess
that everything is true and also false
and who knows how you got into this mess
but no one is to blame, and no one lied.
I watch you sometimes in your perilous
inventions on the palisade of day,
presiding (and though you try to turn away,
I see that wistful spray against the truss)
over the wreck of another setting sun.