The
forty-eighth Moon Prize, goes
to Lauren Camp's poem "Plucking the Lake from
Devotion."
Plucking
the Lake from Devotion
by
Lauren Camp
The
music of worship needs sometimes to echo
a
body of water, the makers of breath
to
be saved by unfaltering nature,
to
be drawn from their traces, and travel
above to a clearing. So you might understand why
we
should not be allowed to wander
into
every larkspur and trail fork, why we must leave
some
domains in the distance, not structure a day
with
backpacks and bootprints
around someone’s temple—the depth that holds
context
for hope. Reality is sometimes more
myth
than contours. I’m narrowing down to a specific
soil
in the desert and a time older
than
the sum of its parts. When water had edges
and
basins and pine into distance.
The version
most
often repeated claims two eagle plumes
sited
a pueblo on a land draped with bare places.
In
dust and from dust, strong arms wrought repeating
walls
and ladders to fathom the sky. Wind bent
and
reshaped and vanished. The people lived
in dimensions of owl between dawn and moon. Lived hard
in
their origins as cool water flowed
from
the mountain. Water was favor, and they named
its
crossing for fields, fire and horses. Hawks passed above
and
aimed with grand movement. Around them
over
time, the people saw violence—new roads, wire fences
and
closure. The crowd of such disruption creased
their
reason but they bent again with stone
to
the corn, transferred thought back to the sparing
desert,
returned up their rungs. To gather their senses
they climbed past the amber
hair
of the deer through sun-glare and hills
to
a lake far from the near earth
of
the normal. The vessel of nothing but tears,
to
each other’s reflection. They went to the lake to rename
their
universe, to say Not today Not
tomorrow, and to measure the cause
of
their home and of regular days. At the lake ripples
choired,
open-mouthed. And look, here’s a danger line: the lake
belonged
to the people. To catch their pleas
and
whatever they do when they need
another
essential beginning. The strong people
might only have needed the repentant light. Or they might
have
offered their flaws or other injustice. I’ll never know.
And
you should never know, and that’s the importance.
When
I read about the lake’s acquisition, I imagine
spirited flowers that spiral up
beside
water. We all want to be changed
by
such colors. The truth is other people were given
permission
to hike the beautiful earth
and
photograph its shimmers. Borrow the blue.
Tell
me when do you want others in your prayers? Tell me
how a lake could be taken. The strong people took
truth
as burden, but remembered standing safe
against
sky when the lake was glad to see them.
Years
crawled over the water without offering
this
private sequential shape for wounded refrains
and
invocations. A request isn’t always
a
solution. The people asked in languages for the
extravagant
muscle
of water, its many windows. They asked
its
solace. They asked and asked
and
with drummed cadence. For 64 years, they asked
with
dented voices, shuffling vowels.
And when the lake was returned, they planted their
feet
in
its mist, offered it wings, bones and their endings.
*
* * * *
"Plucking
the Lake from Devotion" is from Turquoise Door
(3: A Taos Press, 2018) by Lauren Camp.
Lauren Camp is the author of four books of poems. Her work has been honored with the Dorset Prize, fellowships from
Black Earth Institute and The Taft-Nicholson Center, and a finalist citation for the Arab American Book
Award. Her poems have been translated into Mandarin, Turkish, Spanish
and Arabic. www.laurencamp.com
