S. R. Lavin - Desolation Lake

“Look, waterlilies! ” I say, stopping the car.
My wife opens her door
and leaning out, takes in the fresh air.

A small island near-by captures my sense for adventure
and I’d like to have a picnic on it
but I don’t see a boat to take us out there.

I stop on a dirt road by a boggy swamp. “How lovely” I say.
“How’s that? ” my wife says. “Why do you think it’s beautiful?
All the trees are dead.” “Yes, that’s true. But no man will ever
bother to do anything here...it’s forbidding. So it’s never going to be ruined. Maybe I should take a snapshot? ”

A great heron swoops out of the grassy marsh.
A giant owl glides over us and drops into the top of a pine tree.

Snapshot: the point by the water where we eat our sandwiches.
Snapshot: my wife wearing her sunhat by the lakefront.

Way off in the Adirondacks between Fish House and Corinth
there’s a young woman selling bread by the side of the road.
She’s wrapped up in a sleeping bag, filing her nails.
She’s plucked her eyebrows and has platinum blonde hair.
She wants to be somewhere else. She wants to be Marilyn Monroe.

Snapshot: the chasm and the rushing river below.

It’s obvious to us now that we were saved from a desolate life,
off by ourselves, alone at the end of the road,
selling bread to whomever got lost or stumbled upon us.

We didn’t get to Hope Falls like we started out to,
but we did spend the day together and we did love each other.

S. R. Lavin

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/desolation-lake/