Graveyard

Water spun vividly off each stroke. 
The still sway of waves creaking 
as paddles pull us faintly through. 
From a distance they seemed like birds 
resting or breathing in the luxury of water. 
Or heads of the dead and drowned. 
"What are those over there?" 
We approached, timid winds catching up. 
We crackled like sparks to the air. 

They were damned, 
sunk laboriously under years 
of weary lake water rising slowly. 
They are the lumber of industry,
the collateral corpses of growth.
I pictured them in cabins, wooden detail, now. 
Their stumps were left flat like stacks of vinyl 
upon which time recorded itself yawning.

A copse of cut trees sat there, 
some buried under inches of water, 
others something like crowns,  
risen above the blue-black gallery floor. 
Like grey tombstones they stood, 
overseeing the measured breaths of current 
at their sunken post for would-be rings untold. 
There are only footsteps and roots buried here.

We paddled among the graveyard 
spying on sleeping nests of fish and spiders. 
Trees whispered through their twists and knots. 
I thought I heard their last rustles
waft up through nostalgic waves. 
We were beckoned back with the wind 
and we went on, like the undertaker at dusk. 
Yet the gravesite remains; a memorial.

© Douglas Dumais