Bottomless Lake

 

they all said it was “bottomless,”

that lake past all the farms,

a couple hours’ drive;

they said boats went down

and never left a trace, vanished

as if swallowed whole by time,

no simple sand and rock there to receive them,

no sound, no scrape, no muffled thump

like everything that falls

(and everything does fall);

they all believed it like Yeti in the snow,

saucers in the desert,

things that kept the world exotic

while life took every mystery away,

a box filled and emptied every day,

a depth they knew so well

where water came and went

between the pull of moon and sun,

subtracting to some finite sum,

and they’d fall themselves

into the true abyss

for which there is no wonder

but the unexamined buoyancy of faith

 

Literacy

 

what we will and will not understand,

the language of the world

waits in space between the leaves,

rattles in the chatter of the wind,

whispers hope at nightfall,

despair within the questions of its bending trees

in seasons that it does not know,

days in the dyslexia of me

and we,

twisted from the discourse of the sun

 

John Kristofco

John P. (Jack) Kristofco’s poetry and short stories have appeared in about two hundred publications, including Burningwood. He has published three collections of poetry and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times.

 

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