He Said Turn Here

He Said Turn Here

by Dean Young

and then Tony showed us the lake

where he had thrown some of his sadness last summer   

and it had dissolved like powder   

so he thought maybe the lake could take   

some of the radiant, aluminum kind   

he had been making lately.

And it did.

It was a perfect lake,

none of the paint had chipped off,

no bolts showing, the arms that Dante   

and Virgil would have to hack through   

not even breaking the surface.   

Mumbling Italian to itself,

it had climbed down two wooden stairs

back to the beach now that the rains were done.

How strange to be water so close to the ocean

yet the only other water you get to talk to   

comes from the sky. Maybe this is why   

it seems so willing to take on

Tony's sadness which sometimes corrodes   

his friends, which is really

many different sadnesses, smaller   

and smaller, surrounded by more   

and more space, each a world and   

at its core an engine like a bee   

inside a lily, like buzzing inside   

the bee. It seems like nothing   

could change its color although   

we couldn't tell what color it was,   

it kept changing. In the summer,

Tony says he comes down early each day

and there's no one around so the lake

barely says a thing when he dives in

and once when his kitchen was on fire in Maine   

and he was asleep, the lake came and bit his hand,   

trying to drag him to safety   

and some nights in New Mexico,   

he can hear it howling,

searching for him in the desert   

so we're glad Tony has this lake

and we promise to come back in August

and swim with him across,   

maybe even race.