Every Last One

The lake draws all ghosts down,
Even those of children
Who will be novelists

One day, their scared child selves
Ghosts that they write about
Dragged by the long lake down.

The lake is not your skull.
Your skull’s a bed for it.
This lake that drowns your ghosts

Has to be absolute
In its peculiar shape.
It can be fictional

Fingerbone, actual
Baikal, Slocan. It lies,
Much longer than it is

Wide, and terribly deep,
A trench ice ages gouged,
A testament to ice

Tearing its nails in dirt.
That sort of lake, a loch
Of invisible beasts,

Those monsters ghosts become.
Those cold, dark lakes are rare.
You’ll need every last one.