Elegy for Lake Nacogdoches

			Nacogdoches, TX

Under a cloud-guarded sky, a man lowers 
a trolling motor in the distance, a faint trill 
as it coasts along the shores, foam lipping the bow, 
a wide beam spotlight bobbing over shadows 
of sandbars stretching beneath the shallow wake. 
Fish blink through the spotlight’s funnel as the boater 
tosses glass bottles with white scars from peeled off labels, 
casting aluminum cans that glisten in the yellow circle 
atop the water before drifting into darkness. These empties, 
all he must have consumed during his trip today, 
buoy up like braille. A single bottle begins its topple 
like a bobber dipping, then rising again, then gone. 
Though I know it’s sinking, glugging bubbles as it spins
around giant salvinia. In just a few days this fern 
will double in size, then double again, and again, 
scrimming the surface with matted leaves.
Soon other boaters will cut through this weed 
and carry clumps of stems and leaves into 
uninfested waters, ignoring the game warden’s warnings, 
and the plant will root across those lakes as well. 
These waters will soon empty of fish searching 
for any script of sun narrowly splitting the sealed leaf mat. 
Weevils will ghost through the remains, flickering 
across the water as small rippled specks. But here, tonight, 
a snake glides atop the water and arches like a cane 
in the moon-cast shadow of a branch. Tonight, 
listening to the rumbles and gurgles of the man 
speeding back to the ramp, I ask for an hour more 
before I walk away ensnared in these knots, 
before this lake clots over, before the wind weaves 
through this water and stirs the weeds, 
before it’s shut empty of anything else to grow. 

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