Three Poems from “Love Songs to a City Lake” Paired Music: Gymnopeide, Eric Satie
The Four A.Ms.
You know them. Wakeful, far from her.
I think of her skin, its surface tension, tender. Euglena living there.
Are stars sprinkled over her or only the orange resonances of city?
Have her hundreds of geese tucked their heads, the gosling under wings?
The teal? Tomorrow, no drive. No sight of her. What will I miss then
afloat, along, below? Sunday crowds. Message from her sister wind?
The sheep and dragon clouds of her theatre?
What is this longing for a lake, only a small, dirty, city lake?
In the dark, an unknown walker searches for a pale skipping stone.
Car lights skim by like search lights as if they could make her give up
another secret: How water changes like a baby, a girl, a universe,
Time itself. Remembering itself. I fall asleep to the song
of my love for her, so many questions I know I’ll forget.
Science
She sprang from a leaky aquifer punctured
by a farmer drilling his well. She is the largest body of water
in our city—What! Only 3-1/2 feet deep! I believed
her depth unfathomable. Fathoms. Still do, for
how the paddling and wading birds love her, her shallow
rooted grasses, and yes, the moon making her dance the tides.
It is nothing at all to her that my morning brightens
when I know I’ll see her. She’ll do what she does
seen or unseen, and I will do what I do: write
love letters, stand on her shore, speak them. And listen.
Presence
Driving down her road I remember I’ll see her,
something heart-filling in a new light, so I rush ahead
missing the present: traffic, porches, signs, fleet scooters,
near misses. But this rushing contains my anticipation,
my pulse flittering for a lake, this lake, and first I see
a distant peak, the one that guides travelers
signaling I will see her in one minute, depending
on the traffic lights, and there she is, not gunmetal
but dove gray, spangled, circled this warm morning
by a thousand homo sapiens adoring her.
Then I am past. The road ahead.
The now of her.
Carol D Guerrero-Murphy
Carol D Guerrero-Murphy has a long history of publishing and teaching poetry, including three books (WILLA award and CAL Award and Pushcart). Writing coach, editor, fire survivor, professor, grammie, writer. Ph.D. Denver University. Journal publications include Pilgrimage, Missouri Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner and many others. ms in process: Feral Weather