On Returning to Lake Michigan

Six years gone, I return in August

to cicadas breaching brittle casings,

emerging tender-winged, a green

too new for summer’s waning,

autumn already storming the lake,

washing carp ashore in a shipwreck

of silver flesh, eyes plucked clean,

gulls giddy with the pillage.

Never the same river twice, but

the same lake; how easily I’ve

reversed my metamorphosis,

a tight seam of spine where I’ve

stitched myself into an old skin.

Did I never leave home, stand alone

on Quartz Mountain, sun sweetening

the pines, igniting the crystalline

peak like a pyre in a farewell to

stunted light and prairie-flat sprawl?

Once, I had forgiven this life, taken

the high desert’s beauty as atonement.

Forget mercy, forget growth,

autumn here is a cold country,

skies leaden as an anchor, cicadas

scarcely hours from molt ceding

white underbellies like flags of

surrender; I give up, come with

your wither, your bitter wind.