Upon Visiting a Lake of my Childhood

Long I sought for a pond to cross my eye,
eight years a drought, but the water remains.
Stagnant as the lake, the houses remain
to tempt Dionysus, though some have paid their pittance
long since and fluttered to the table in fervent apathy

We were not so complex then, before the weeds
choked and drowned, when three square yards   
of sand could make a summer,   
and granite and concrete bound a night to clouds
back when I still owed a fee.   

For all the depth of the sky below, I might have known
it would unravel my veins into a grandiose rope,   
eye spliced to swing from a bench in a principality
I abdicated too long ago, and claim no sovereignty in
to date. 

Fences, always with fences.  bay windowed and florid    
in heat, while a handful of planks still span a creek
no longer beguiling or attractive to wander. The heart rotted birch

in a moistened tongue rasps for one last crutched fall to the forest floor,

and my debt is paid.