Eutrophication

There is some interest but no comfort knowing

that a lake too may grow old

sicken, die; as its metabolism

thickens and warms

breeding gnats on a salty skin of algae

while underneath

wave the serrated leathery ferns of seaweed-

symptoms of a changed

internal climate: a slowed aging body

sinking plum-like

in its own syrupy bowl, filling itself up

absorbing, welcoming

as air settles over with the weight of

soft mellowed iron.

There are no burst sounds of waves cracking on rocks

but a slow whine, oppression

heat and silence. Radiant brisk salmon

spawn elsewhere;

and gulping bass breed in colder waters:

orange, lilac, pinks

and silver replaced by murky greys

of perch meandering in

and eels feeling their way surreptitiously

through the moribund moist

lips of lake-slime. The lukewarm

greenish waters settle

into a casual and perpetual boredom:

a long, low, mononucleic

fever without energy. Even rocks seem limp:

soften at the edges

like prunes, their calluses splayed-off, plump

and satiated, water-logged

like the sweet rot of thousand-year-old eggs.

Sand becomes slag, ceases

waiting to be ploughed or churned; just clots

without hope or anger

waiting only for the next climacteric

in some redundant age

-and words themselves prove geologic:

what the Romans called mare

sea, meaning swift, clear, perilous and

fierce-eutrophies

in time's swell and sag to sodden French marais,

swamp.