The Lake Has Many Faces

The lake has many faces
Reflecting all our moods
The clouds are full of places
The land is full of floods

The lake turns many colors
From blue to green to grey
The sky becomes another lake
Connected in some way

Like mirrors in a barbershop
One upon each wall
Sky and lake reciprocate
Reflecting one and all

The deadly dark, the lilting light
The sun, the moon, the stars
The need for speed, the crying creed
The beast, the best, the bars

Across the lake a light calls out
Begging me to come
I would if I but knew the way
I can’t find my way home

For fun some say
To pass the day
For reasons still unshown

To feel worthwhile
To cause a smile
To reap what went unsown

To ride the wind
To curse the grind
To perish all that’s lost

To play the game
To hide the shame
To never pay the cost

If all this rhyming makes no sense
Perhaps you’ve never known  
I have but one true audience
An audience of one

Alarm clock’s buzz
Yanked from one world to another
The first so real but fast fading
A mist in morning sun

What was it all about?
Clutching at straws
Blown by this wind of wakening

Think hard
Grasp the remnants with words
Write them on the beach
That bounds this ocean of unconsciousness

But the very act of naming
Is a wave of willfulness
Erasing the words
As soon as they are formed

Cosmo killed a raccoon last night.
Ellen found it by the door.
She heard the ruckus in the middle of the night.
I did not, being a sound sleeper

It’s my job to dispose of his kills.
I grab the shovel to scoop him up
Before the warm September sun
Makes him stink.

I try sliding the shovel under his soft fluffy fur
He falls off as I lift him up
A clumsy undertaker.
I should apologize

Finally, I get him balanced on the blade
Start the long walk up the driveway
Then off into the woods far enough  
To hide his stink and flies

The path through the trees
Is blocked by spiderwebs.
I whisper “I’m sorry”
As I break each strand.

In the cool morning
I throw him rudely across the big ditch  
That might keep the dogs
From dragging him home again.

Standing beside his body
I feel the need for words
Some remembrance
He was once here

I hear the cicadas,
Fewer and slower now
September having slowed their song
They’re singing their own dirge

I was tired, tired of it all
When the black dog came
Full of joy, scratching at my door

He trotted down a darkened path
Into a smothering forest
Stopping only once to see if I would come

Eternal Eden from whence we came
To whence we must return
******* succoring green

What awaits us there?
I know not, and yet
It seems the way to go

Twilight steals what eyesight’s left
Imagination fills the cleft
Fireflies flashing frantic fires
Overload the neuron wires

Ghostly beams steal through the trees
Creating moon mirages
Fairies beckon, promise to please
An **** for the ages

Katy did - Katy didn’t
Unending ancient chorus
Drowning out all other sound
Swallowed by the forest

Blindly stumbling toward the end
All oblivion calls us
Careful where you step my friend
You might become the Walrus

Looking at the Sugarberry tree
Its rough but paper thin bark
Splitting and peeling

Growth is such a painful thing
Is it the same with us?

In truth there is both you and me
Circling each other like a shark
Writhing and reeling

In the end everyone must hang
Please don’t make a fuss