Lake Mendota  

1

Kayaks, canoes, sailboats, fishing boats

and racing shells, fours and eights,

collapsibles, one- and two-seaters, coxless

pairs, their necks stretch as they catch

the afternoon breeze on the crested blueness.

Around the wooden bellies, some rock in the

entrails of caught pike, muskellunge and sun

perch, the water weeds swinging to and fro, the

bloom of algae. In the darkness of glacial deposits

they guess whether the fish that suddenly disappeared

vertically, up to the surface, has fallen for the

glare of cutters, or suddenly had faith in the white flags

that in their dozens admire the sparkling surface

of the lake and whisper: “Mirror, mirror, tell us,

which one will the water take first?”

2

In the holiday mood of Memorial Day,

long before the fireworks blossom on the dark water, as an

oarsman, still in pajamas, on the veranda scans the captured

clouds on the vault of the sun, the oars are still drowsing

in the boathouse, in the depths decomposers chat

about old acquaintances who have sailed not ahead but right

downward, to the region of undergrowth, of animal plankton.

Between the pinkies of the milfoil they willy-nilly took up

limnology until it adopted them. In the lee of the bay,

where the waves and the wind are brought to a halt in the reeds,

someone, as the splashes come through the cracks in the

boats, suddenly recalls the sayings of their former body.