Improv: Marks' "The Lake"

Deceptive, this calm, the way slow-toppling
waves bat our thighs, the way the mosquitoes'
wings pause on our shoulders as they proceed
with their nightly suck

of iron, the velvet-red swelling their bellies,
ours: empty. Where's your mother, father,
dementia-prone grandmother? Let us
plunge this johnboat into the lake

without their permission, flooding the foot
rests and our shoes that mingle with rotten
leaves in an admixture less than admirable,
let us stroke with a single paddle the depths

of this pond--though they call it a lake--
and we'll sink without effort in murk
and mire, those trite aquatic descriptors
since we're loaded on Jim Beam and whatever

we've got, let us be the shore, rather,
let the dock's benediction claim nothing
we own.