Poem: Crater Lake

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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.