Superior, by which I mean the lake was not
As much as we imagined
It, a synonym, or else the surface
Cold because the light
Was catastrophic
In the distance, no, the water made of its
Appearances, the presence of
A promise formed
The shore, the waves repeating
And repeatable. I had thought
That I was thinking
Up, was therefore under it, the sky
Was strange within
The world at once upon
But not itself
Belonging. We looked away,
Were other than
And then the day was not of what between us
Edged, growing
Into sand the dark dissolved
To something less
Than brilliance, the wind within
Itself a distance
Yet again, a distance. I had to ask it
Everything. Our voices
Almost mattered
Making sense, the lake is every
Kind of blue today,
You said, it is
And it is cold, I know, but what will come
Of it tomorrow. I can’t
Pretend what’s left
That we without ourselves
Are shaking, made of this
Material. Or maybe it, what was it,
Only mattered into, formed itself
From nothing new, a sound
I said, or else I only
Listened to, or thought to try but couldn’t
Say existence is
An exit we have traced
Our lives to find it
Thus, the line the trees have made
Behind themselves, green
And grey where people aged alone
In separate languages, the shade in which
Increasingly their names
Became mechanical, becoming difference,
Always difference, as if no other shore of light
To hollow out or follow, no path
Behind us leading each
Unto each other here, where it, whatever is
Is never certain, love, unless
Alone that we are possible
In this, the unkempt
Vacancies of how
Between the beautiful and full
Of loss, that I might reach for you
And find not only clarity, but solitude, a terror turned to wonder,
Tuned to our despair
Nicholas Gulig is a Thai-American poet born in Wisconsin, and the author of North of Order (YesYes Books). Educated in Montana (BA), Iowa (MFA), and Denver, Colorado (PhD), in 2011-2012 he was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Bangkok, Thailand. Currently, he lives in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, and teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
Photo by USFWSmidwest
