Secrets Uncovered, Mysteries Made

by in Archive Words
Lake by Josh Hechinger

They drained the old lake
After young Peterson died,
In spite of the signs.

In the mud and clay
Resting hidden and sodden
Were the following:

Three old orphan tires
From three different cars
Some rotted right through;
Some new.

And five license plates
Two fake, two stolen, one bona fide;
From different states
And from different points in time
Some factory fresh
Most crusted with grime.

Seven rusted bikes,
Four motor, one trike; some old
Some still to be found
On police reports;
Some the old rides of local urban legends,
Lost forever in the space of a story
That would fit in a song.

Near one hundred corpses;
The aforementioned fellow
Young Peterson,
And then more besides.

Plus the reported
Things that you’ll have heard about
In all the tabloids found in waiting rooms
And highway rest stops:

The ancient vessel,
An early submersible
Of some local fame,
An old attraction,
The glass bottomed bell-jar,
A nickel for a ride;

“See the creatures
Grown awry in the darkness,
Be thrilled and educated!”

A shining cylinder
Of uncertain origin
(Although some might posit a starting location
Somewhere more extra to the terrestrial
And this couldn’t be disproven
By it’s scorched and battered hide
And the globular grey and viscous stuff
Inside.)

And what seemed to be leftovers
From some vast sea creature
With tentacles long and wide,
Even though the nearest
Body of salted water
Was quite a considerable ride.

And please excuse my reticence
To return to details
Of those bodies
But some were quite grotesque a find.

(Although others were suprising
Even for visiting experts,
So well preserved were they;
And these perfect cadavers
Were the cause of some conjecture
On the preservative powers
Of Lake Millhaven clay.)

At least half a dozen of
The poor freshwater flotsam
Looked perfect when viewed
In their newly found state;
But attempts to remove them
Were thwarted by
Flesh and rot that peeled away
From bone
Like so much well-fried chicken.

And no-one could forget
The near mummified bride,
Her corpse stripped to the skeleton
From belly to toes;
The old bone frame
Of her bridal skirts
Stark against the darkness of the water;
The girl gone missing on some long lost wedding day,
Transformed to some macabre mermaid.

(And admittedly, for every
Slippery skinned stiff
And costumed tragedy,
There were several plain skeletons
Or more recent bodies,
With more obvious and ordinary
Evidence on them
And as such much less worthy of note.)

Worth mentioning perhaps
Is that although many pieces
Of cars and bikes
And prams and road signs
And people and cattle
And frippery and chattel
Were recovered from the lake;

And many of those
Showed bite marks and claw marks
Of land life or water life;

When all was said and done
And the last drops had run
And Lake Millhaven was gone,
Not a single sign was found
In that dank wet ground
Of a single, solitary fish.

And while some secrets were uncovered,
With long lost souls discovered;

And almost every one of us
That lives our life
In the town
That grew around that lake
Can lay claim to some part
Of the things found within it…

More mysteries were created
Than solved.
And not all things found in the rotted wet
Belonged to one of us.

The following two tabs change content below.
Nicolas Papaconstantinou
My Twitter profile

Nicolas Papaconstantinou

Nicolas Papaconstantinou is an enthusiastic amateur creative type, and the chap behind Elephant Words. Be nice to him. He growed up kinda wrong.
Tagged with:

There are no comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  
Please enter an e-mail address