The Lake Too Is Personal

The Lake Too Is Personal

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed.  Why do men then now not reck his Rod?

                             Gerard Manley Hopkins

                                   “God’s Grandeur”

           

—after all the bodies were found

            and taken

            home cold, toe tagged,

            under picnic blankets

the surface of the lake was calm again

            and black as night ice—

            or coal, thick slabs

            still in their seam

It was a surface only black like this

            could pick or resuscitate

            or not even

            but seep deeper

            into,

beyond bottom, as through a small valve-stem

            uncapped,

            pushed in, 

            when air itself is

received, sucked the way the living suck

            after seeing death

            stiffen the lips

            and limbs

they make great gulps of it

            as though they were the ones

            in the water    

            and surfaced

            and found,

            and going home

            to that great brooding

breast bent over a cook stove,

            oven door open

            grates orange as gloaming

            while the lake,

            after that last boy is

surfaced and returned, smoothes its suit

            brushes down the pleats

            until there aren’t any

            until they are gone,

            until they never ever were.