A month ago terrapins and sliders clumped
like galls on half-sunk limbs. They’ve had
enough of summer now, taking the sun
only when coming up for air, nosing the surface
like breathless fish in a slow ground
to the dragonflies’ scat-sung counterpoint.

Accept the lake for what it is now:
an inland ocean choked with shoals of algae.
They smear and trail in spongy clots,
tear limb from limb the mirrored trees 
that in another season could fall whole, weightless 
as shades into an underworld of tarnished light.

Stuck in the green continuum that’s August,
it’s hard to think winter might come again,
sponge fishing, unraveling each billowed thread.
Working its slow work at the bottom—

riffling the stacks and reams of leavings,
writing chapters, whole novels,
on the latticed skeletons.

It’s the season of gold and blood,
whose intricate frescos might almost 
tell a human tale, the old one 
about the flesh and spirit. The beech tree 
sifts its coins through knotted fists; 
the dogwood turns to a fountain 
of blood, becomes shorthand 
for Medea, Tarquin, the Son of Sam.
Or the obverse of that well-worn coin:
tree of the Crucifixion made 
Lamb of God. In the golden afternoons, 
our tongues roll round 
appropriately Latinate syllables: 
impasto, imprimatura. . . . 

Might almost tell the tale, 
but doesn’t. Neither Van Eyck 
nor Pollock, abstract and inexpressive,
it’s the season of colored sugar water, 
the placebo we drink with our eyes 
against the coming blankness, 
that long dry spell in the marrow.