from my unpublished second collection
Late Summer, Chain of Lakes. Whitecaps curl their stubby fingers, grabbing this, then that. A life vest falls off and is swallowed by seaweed. A pontoon smacks against the pier. No one’s renting.
No one’s coming down the three miles of Lake View Road that’s visible from the barkeep’s stool at the Lake View Bar and Grill.
Even the locals hate the rain: the mosquitoes and the biting flies, the too-green of everything swollen and closed in. Meditation is loneliness, and loneliness is for the old.
Meditation is watching sports with the sound off, for men whose deeds are smoke in the trees, firewood stacked in an old garage, foam on the pale, coarse sand.
First published in Crazyhorse
Return to Home Page images and text © by Alpay Ulku
