Lake

April. Shadows crimson-edged, tattooed with light, 
corrupt the visible in sweet intimacy. 
Nature's tamed backyard with ruined barbecue 

falls toward the sinkhole lake, cricket frogs creaking 
through the reeds, a brace of osprey suspended 
overhead, whispery angels in the school of Tiepolo. 

The lake turns a circle through Ptolemy's spheres, 
nested one in another like Dante's malebolgia. 
Decaying palm fronds rust at the edge 

of dull water troubling the spattered half-sheen. 
A turtle head breaks gray canvas 
beneath the quizzical dependence of the dragonfly, 

then bobs down to the habitation of souls. 
The loyal angels modeled their fleshy bodies 
on snapping turtles, never approached except at risk. 

Subjugation arranges the soul, 
each night the dark seeping in, roiling like a cloudbank, 
then rimshot thunder, a scrabble of lightning, 

the drugged rush and release of tropical rain.