Torch Lake - Years Go By

The cedar dock splinters out to the moon's shine
Like the second hand ticking along
A white-faced clock
Drawing in loose boats and green moths
To its sweep of time

Is there any difference
Between those little dots of cabin lights
Strung like pearls along the shore
Three miles across Torch Lake
And the stars crowded light years away?

Orbs swirling with life in the dark

Even now
We only but understand the skin of the universe
The ripples of a lake
Thin clouds aching like fossils
Under the moon’s archeological search by headlamp

My wife and I at the campfire
Measure distance
By the relief of this quieted July Sunday night
And the passing orbits of the space station

Three cycles
Is the most we’ve ever survived

Depends on how full the cooler is
And how many words we have left to hum and turn

Holding hands as the night whittles away
And the flames lower to a bath of embers
To the tapping Morse code of our bare toes.

Copyright © | Year Posted 2021



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