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Crater Lake,
You purest expression of water
Your most vivid blue statement
Your clarity less obstructed than the water in my own eyes
You frighten me.
You rip the meaning from my life
And dangle me over the checker square farms
Higher
High enough that Mount Everest looks like a pimple
Storm clouds look like plum blossoms floating to earth
The Pacific Ocean looks like a waveless bowl.
I shuffle down your volcanic slopes
Lusted after by gravity
Choking on the dust
My resisting stomps kick up.
I see the wake of a boat
Ghastly white
Slice through your windless, still surface
Carving grooves that roll outwards, softly.
I remove my sweat-moistened clothes
And then I contaminate you
By jumping in.
I peer at your depths
With goggles strapped across my forehead.
I can see everything
Every boulder frozen under the weight of your shores
As if I could reach out and take then between my fingers
Like a child holding a coin to the moon
To judge its size.
I crawl along the top of your water
Towards your center.
The boulders shrink below me
Until they can fit in a spice jar
But their grainy multitude is still evident
Because your purity is cleaner than air
There is no haze on your horizon.
One stroke further
Before the giant boulders dissolve into each other
Below my feet
And all that remains under me is a slab
The size of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
I am higher than a fighter jet.
Roadways would be too small to see distinctly
But their presence felt
Like wrinkles in an ancient face
Seen from across the street.
The slab grows to mountainous proportions
With another two strokes.
The Great Pyramid is a pimple on this desert
Splayed below my feet
Sinking like a continent
Deeper and deeper.
And then:
Nothing.
I am smaller than a pebble
Examined in the calloused hand
Of a hill giant
Wedged in the fold of his love line.
I hang over the pure blue my eyes cannot pierce
Too light to sink
Too small to be spotted
By gravity.
Nothing!
Crater Lake
You rob me of my substance.
You roll me into myself
Smaller and denser
A ball of dough
Until I am too small to see
A crumb
Unnoticeable
Unimportant
No matter what it thinks of itself.
And what lies beyond?
I am too afraid to swim farther
But I might guess:
More nothing.
All the clarity in the world
Can only illuminate a fraction of what I don’t know.
I need but ten strokes to return to shore.
