The Story Of A Lake Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

Between two hills a chasm, rain fills it up in the winter,
and a lake is born. In May, June and middle July the lake
is fine, a bit grey, but cooling. The lake has no outlet it is
just there for farms to use when there is no rain.
In August the water is warm and brown by silt, but it is
the only swimming pool we have so we linger, drink beer
in the evening and pretend we are at the seaside.
When the lake is dry we find dead things we do not like,
skeletons of animals and sometimes the missing person
who went for a nightly swim and didn´t tell anyone.
In winters it rains and the lake fills up, in May it looks
almost blue. Although we say every year we were going
to the beach we don´t it is far away and the lake is near.
The rural idyll was shattered this year, when a swimming
water dog sensed something in front of it, the dog turned
swam wildly to shore, but as its owner lifted it out of
the water a monster bit the dog in half, its owner was left
holding the upper part of the poor mutt; so much blood
and utter distress. As there is little one can do with half
a dog the shocked owner threw the remains back into
the water where it was snapped up, by what was described
as a huge reptile with a shark like mouth, and all bathers fled.
The lake is a silent, malevolent eye in the blissful landscape.
This year we are going to the seaside.