, because there was yet no lake

 

into many nights we made the lake

             a labor, and its necessary laborings

to find the basin not yet opened

in my body, yet my body—any body

wet or water from the start, to fill a clay

, start being what it ever means, a beginning—

the earth’s first hand on a vision-quest

wildering night’s skin fields, for touch

             like a dark horse made of air

, turned downward in the dusk, opaquing

a hand resembles its ancestors—

the war, or the horse who war made

             , what it means to be made

to be ruined before becoming—rift

             glacial, ablation and breaking

lake-hip sloping, fluvial, then spilled—

  

I unzip the lake, walk into what I am—

             the thermocline, and oxygen

, as is with kills, rivers, seas, the water

             is of our own naming 

I am wet we call it because it is

a happening, is happening now

 

imagined light is light’s imagination

a lake shape of it

             , the obligatory body, its dark burning

reminding us back, memory as filter

desire as lagan, a hydrology—

             The lake is alone, we say in Mojave

 

, every story happens because someone’s mouth,

a nature dependent—life, universe

             Here at the lake, say

, she wanted what she said

             to slip down into it

for which a good lake will rise—Lake

which once meant, sacrifice

which once meant, I am devoted

 

             , Here I am, atmosphere

sensation, pressure

, the lake is beneath me, pleasure bounded

a slip space between touch and not

slip of paper, slip of hand

             slip body turning toward slip trouble

, I am who slipped the moorings

             I am so red with lack

 

to loop-knot

or leave the loop beyond the knot

             we won’t say love because it is

a difference between vertex and vertices—

the number of surfaces we break

enough or many to make the lake

             loosened from the rock

one body’s dearth is another body’s ache

             lay it to the earth

 

, all great lakes are meant to take

             sediment, leg, wrist, wrist, the ear

let down and wet with stars, dock lights

distant but wanted deep,

             to be held in the well of the eye

woven like water, through itself, in

and inside, how to sate a depression

if not with darkness—if darkness is not

             fingers brushing a body, shhhh

, she said, I don’t know what the world is

 

I slip for her, or anything

, like language, new each time

             diffusion—remade and organized

and because nothing is enough, waves—

each an emotional museum of water

 

left light trembles a lake figure on loop    

             a night-loop

, every story is a story of water

             before it is gold and alone

before it is black like a rat snake

I begin at the lake

, clean once, now drained

             I am murk—I am not clean

everything has already happened

always the lake is just up ahead in the poem

, my mouth is the moon, I bring it down

lay it over the lake of her thighs

             warm lamping ax

hewing water’s tender shell

slant slip, entering like light, surrounded

into another skin

             where there was yet no lake  

yet we made it, make it still

to drink and clean ourselves on