At my age, life begins to yawn open
my small, insular stream growing
itself ever deeper, so that soon it is a
small river, and then much like a
kettle lake, dug nearly bottomless
by a glacier slowly retreating

I am marooned in its center
on a small old dock, with the sky
opened at night above, so starkly
expansive and mysteriously clear.
Across the dark, sighing water,
on the very far shore, there is a
party going late into the night, all lit
with neon, and music droning away

I can make out the beat of the music,
its broad undertone, lacking specific
body, just keeping time for the shadow
figures I can see moving through the windows.
They come and go, different shapes,
some bulky, some lithe, a few male
but most feminine, all dancing for a song
or two, then the music’s base turns
for something new, unrecognizable,
and it takes the adumbrated dancers
a few balky steps to fall in line, to
harmonize their limbs and gyrating souls

I can only watch from my dock,
the water on all sides giving off the
moist, weedy smell of summer, lapping
stertorously around me, occasionally
catching a glint of moon in a small wave’s
break. But for the moon’s shimmer,
or the gentle crawl of water onto shore,
I would be stranded in a vacuum of darkness,
watching the dancers collide and shimmy,
voiceless and featureless, vague forms
living whole lives across the lake,
known to me only as small flurries of motion