1.
After Hurricane Beth ripped through the lake was yellow
and warm We were not allowed to go swimming The water alive
with microorganisms churned-up and full of debris washed from
the surrounding slopes by almost a foot of rain in one day
Even on our hilltop the streets were rivers storm sewers overflowed
Trees ripped apart from the top down branches everywhere
The wind lifted the gymnasium roof at school and put it back down
After the hurricane I found eels in the stream flowing out of Bell Lake
Mother and her parents who'd lived in the area over thirty years had never
heard of eels in Bell Lake They must have been stirred up
by the hurricane from the other end of the lake -- by Settle's field --
the deep end where on extra-hot days we cooled-off during practice by
leaping out of the war canoe
Two weeks before my tenth birthday My last summer
in the small upstairs bedroom with a Blue Boy
print framed on the wall The room overlooking Dad's garden and
woodpile Mr Buzza's triangular ham radio tower between
our house and his I could even see his basement radio room
and spent hours watching the wings of his solar powered radiometer spin
inside their glass sphere on the window ledge ... I imagined emerging
after disaster Finding myself the only one left alive I would use
that ham radio to talk to the world
2.
The turtles I found in Bell Lake were painted turtles caught
down in Settle Lake and abandoned in Bell with notches
and string holes drilled through their shells Trout were rumoured
to be in the lake The city had tried stocking Bell for fishing but the fish
died out The water was too clean (it had been our water supply) No motor
boats permitted It was too empty of fish food of plant life
The lake clear to the bottom at twenty feet and cold
from springs that filled it from inside bubbling up through
gravel or the silt run-off from the subdivided Bell farm
One morning, down at The Rocks -- playing on those crumbling war
concrete blocks pushed into the lake years ago -- I looked in
and saw the flicker of four or five trout -- almost invisible
against the mud and rock bottom
I never saw them again
