Lake Arrowhead

Around Arrowhead Lake Teams of chainsaws cope Trying to deal with once evergreen now brown This radius of nature’s neglect so quick to double All witness to search this tragedy Seeking a solution or at least someone to accuse But our delight in this brown needle shower and the turpene air thick with pine dust reveals a lack of innocence a bath of blood and the scent of death if we were to imagine it so But we do not And the large blue tube that punctures the lake, the dead and drying life around me, and the small appealing bottle in my hand I pretend all are unrelated in an absolute lie of scale Unfortunately this does not end with aiding and abetting Or complicity in this vast unorchestrated human conspiracy The true reason for this shallow memorial and my discomfort Is that I cannot decide if I have truly committed a crime – For even the warring maiden Joan of Arc, my agnostic patron saint of passion, stood only so long against inevitability