The Lake of the Presidents, 1992 Meddle night, and the loons are making policy across the lake where the hilltops are crease of black paint on black paint. Water-lines ripple outwards from this near shore, moonlight on their planes meaninglessly benign, a liquid mood flattening dead leaves, floating, gingerish and paling under swagged white clouds, clouds which can fill the mind entirely.

The gaze levels back down along black waters at the Lake of the Presidents, a duck foot raised alongside a floating midriff, fitted there like a batwing, as Mercury’s wings to heel, the littlebody heeling over and righting.

Meddle night and the loons are making policy across the lake where the yellow lights are. And there’s policy and more policy until you can never have enough of it, until the clouds are stuck through with weaponry like a duck ready to eat, stuck with clove sticks, and our minds lift no more but fill with worrying, and our foot nudges ripples on the near shore, sending the benign in ever increasing meaninglessness outward into darkness, the rims of those widening circles quietening long before reaching shores where in yellow-lit rooms belonging to nations the meddling goes on beyond our understanding and we are grounded, near ourselves, in our minds, helpless, nature loving, in inaction

DOUGLAS OLIVER