Santa Rosa Lake

Silence at Santa Rosa Lake

the clouds don’t move; they hold
vigil with the sun and the shadows and heat.
a glass-flat and naked laketop
meditates in its earthbed--
mud and sand and an outer mane
of desert shrubs and siltstone--all silent--
all silent save the hush of wind
through leafless fingers of cottonwood--
all silent--
all silent save intermittent lope of fish to surface
feeding on skeeters,
save the infrequent ruffle of wind
bristling the surface,
save the tenor rasp of a bluetail fly,
grown giant in the desert
and pestering my bared knees,
save the lapping impatience of the lake waves
curling like the lips of a wineglass
on the mudded shore,
save all this, plus the punctuated caw
of a desert raven, high perched and eyeballing my socks, strewn
upon the spiral curves of the cottonwood.
till I see there is no silence in this desert
and never was
once sitting and stillness learn
and absorb the symphony
that whispers away from human eyes