The Lake That Ate Me
I Almost drowned,
which is to say,
I fell upwards into a darkness
that contained no earth or sky.
Ten years old and a strong swimmer,
but that lake only buoyed up
its own natatory denizens,
it allowed some to swim,
some to glide, dip or delve,
but it consumes skinny 10-year-old kids;
that being the cloud spawn of an alien shore,
must be dragged down and chewed,
like the pale moons reflection.
The muddy waters are one creature,
a sucking swirl, a single stomach,
it throttles, it snags with cuffing weeds,
clogs with the intestines
of convulsive ghosts.
I am drowning,
then they pierce that lusus naturae
with a long pole thrust from a skiff;
yank me out of its crushing press
like bait from a basilisks reeking maw.
Years later I still awake
from that heaving ‘lac sombre’,
an infection of the imagination
I’ve been harboring parasitically
inside the moil of engulfing dreams.
Perhaps incongruously,
it takes some time before I will enter rooms
with too high a ceiling.
Copyright © Eric Ashford | Year Posted 2019
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