Next to the Lake you are nearly absent.
The wilderness is and then is a little bit more:
rosy-finches lift their aging gray heads
and say nothing, the lake made larger by them,
their glances form the angles of periphery
the water seizes as its own.
Someone always knows the whole story.

You're inside the dark inside,
because it is night. The urge is fleeting.
It is there but forgetting its message.
The wind is an advertisement for itself
across the lake, the wide ruffling of the tent.
Something about being in contact with me.
Are you in contact with me?
(The pronouns are difficult, here.)

You want access to the mysteries?
The shapes around you seem like nothing
but echoes of real definitions, the back side
of darkness that's come to tease
the hunger of arms and legs. You are next to
the Lake of Our Dreams
not in the Lake of Our Dreams, again,
and in the morning the WhisperLights,

their hissing, chemical warmth.
Beside the ponderosas you are bristling
with nothingness. The tree is there
and you're there but what is the purpose of the tree,
the needles beneath your feet, the needless
beneath your feet like an undertow,
the land of sides and the black hole of ins.

The urge is somewhere;
your friend stands on the dead trunk fishing.
Down trees all around like backdrop, granite
frames the lake like a choke-collar.
The rosy-finches just sit there, perched
solidly on the branches of the douglas fir,
and the fir just stands there,
as if the whole were completely unwrapped.