Herman's Lake

Here at Herman Lake, the azure sky pure & unbreached by cloud, the high tundra grass a copperwire, porcelain-fragile in what is no ireffutably mid-autumn. The ater of the lake is frigid, but Willa insists on a swim, out of character for her. Afterwards, she leans the weight of her wet body against me as I sit, lapping at me with her pink tongue. She is content. Around me yawn the capacious mountains, their stone teeth of granite, soapstone, Oklahoma buff turfed in yellowing lichen & moss. It is the sense of being here unnoticed, or of being permitted such rich passage, that thrills & enervates one's gratitude & simple faculty to marvel. I address you, my love, from this place, where late we waded or dove to the depths of the blue lake before the storm fell in behind. Your footsteps dot Kerala in paths the contours of which I cannot conceive-- but it is your face I conjure now, how I might hang upon its shifting countenance. Come to me safely. Here, here, the autumnal sussuration, the brief spitting winds, the dust & the aureate blades of grass.