Poem: Lakes of Darkness

Lakes of Darkness

by John Coyne (Ethiopia 1962-64)

He came here to this green shore
From loneliness of bachelor nights,
Empty Sundays,
A life of shattered hopes
Mirrored into tragedies.

From semesters of faculty treachery,
Misdemeanors in the hall,
Months of silly students,
Who tore wide his heart
With youthful gall.

A little man,
He wears his age with grace;
He brought to me
A spirit bent from
A course of use.

We slid the books aside;
Fished for trout off the point.
I caught a fighting rainbow
Who arched my pole when reeling in
The perimeter of its time.

In this cruel scene
He saw his own tangled metaphor.
Caught, he knew, in a shrinking scope
Where strong men fight artificial
Wars with words,
To die unnoticed as commas on a page.

A trout (free on the sunset of the water)
Flipped in space for flies,
Then slid again to darkness.
The slap of water brought
To mind our own fixed lives.

The world we build is
Ours to shape, more free
Than that slick fish,
Whose time is judged in elements.

Because of this,
We all have lakes of darkness,
Not to seek in refuge,
But to light with love.