"Holes in the Ocean" by Mary Kathryn Lowell

It’s best to pick an object or an animal

or a place and its weather;

no one will understand you otherwise,

if ever.

I chose an ocean.

It was strange not to be afraid

to ride in a car on the surface of the ocean,

to build a fire at night of road-spent tires, splayed

and glowing in the middle of the ocean.

Such power we had over danger

under the bright she-bear Ursa Major!

Of course, I know what you mean.

How is it we took pleasure

from the formidable,

from the less-than-zero

nether-lean of Fremont County

February?

How is it we should measure

the many trucks

and cars and fires like ours

on an ocean?

So solidly deep the reach

of flaming bars,

the shimmering embers

from the milky highway

of fishermen above

to hungry pike beneath

drawn to danger

by our many shiny objects

dandling through holes

we sawed in the ocean.

* Ocean Lake is located in Fremont County, Wyoming, 6,100 acres surface size.

Mary Kathryn Lowell was born in Western Kentucky but reared in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming where words became her correspondence with the world of mountains and rivers. She has written poetry all her life. Her career as a poet is less known, if at all, than her articles on icon painting in journals such as the Orthodox Arts Journal, and Another City where she is a contributing author.