there's singing at
the bottom of the lake!
i plunge down
with ringing ears

through algae membranes
wobbly chasms of sound
at the bottom is
a singing bubble
filled with hearts

i pop my face inside
the ringing stops

a thousand tiny faces turn and smile
they are the saddest pocket orchestra
they've sung away their lives
in fragile bodies shaking

now their glass viola hearts
are breaking

a thousand throats trill out
the final verse:
we are dying
please don't look away

we swam for joy
all summer long

lived in the lake
contesting dive rank

who had the wettest

cannon ball
broadest swan
sharpest jack

the underwater distance competition!
you sink like a stone
shovel your feet into the muck

crank like a panzer through honey
eighty seconds later
pop up way out there

our twelve year old bodies
cavorted slithered swam
through rising storms and setting suns

summer put there for us to inhale
then pound on one another like gorillas

suddenly it was back-to-school
while we were learning to borrow a one
our minnow natures died