Lake Bed

We hop and stride over marooned rocks That have not been dry in nearly 200 years. Our lake is drained to a flinty low tide For dam repairs; it's oaken sluiceway Revealing a workmanship long gone. We walk to the Big Island Laughing at the boat bottom paint That scraped the highest rocks And collecting debris; faded beer cans, A cigarette tin, pottery shard, pink glass. We never find the eagle's new nest tree Just his leavings; a pickerel jaw, mussel shells, A goose wing, still meaty. The old forest is revealed In hundreds of eerie and water-carved trunks. They say the stumps saved our lake From motors and roads and resort marinas. But we are a conquering breed of creature; Our lake did its own killing, Sending its water to the canals To float the barges of coal To fuel the furnaces that poisoned air and sea. Our rocky soil may have saved these hills From the straight-row farming of the plains But not even the poles can save their own ice From our marauding ways. Walking the bleakness of the lake bed, I shake off the long view; Thinking of trees planted, Dams removed to allow salmon to spawn And birds discovered by quarantined watchers. I return the goose wing to the rocks In hopes of feeding the foxes.