My best friend shot
himself in his car beside this shore.
It is half night and half
day. The lake is glass.
Nothing moves in my rowboat.
It drifts above a boulder with flecks

of quartz. A mossy log,
sunken for decades, rots.
The oars rest in my hands.
No one will find me in this fog.
Now is the moment a breath begins.
Anything can happen. It does.

A long pike sleeps in weeds.
A magnificent knife. I watch
the cold-blooded beauty
of a fish and stifle the urge
to wake this other-worldly
predator from my shadow.