Window on a Lake

I went away.

I stood at the edge of where I went
and stripped down naked,
plunged into the murkines
of my own mistakes
looking for the shiny pebbles I had lost;
pebbles collected
on the shores of many lakes
between here and there:

Lake Michigan and Pangong Tso.

I didn't find them:
they have been lost for forever
to the earth and the rain
and the silt of time.

That rain
it beat down hard on me
when I returned.

And then it took with it
the afternoon mist
leaving behind the inky air
made of all my pen-stained compositions from last year.

Eternity has come and gone.

But these clouds
have since refused to clear.