So’s Your Mother

Jacked up on cribbing, a house

on the lake looks so vulnerable

I’d like to topple it splashing

roof-down into the water.

What does the Indian name

of this grave lake mean? A friend

translates it, “So’s Your Mother,”

so maybe So’s Your Mother

undermined this structure and forced

the owners to rebuild it

with a poured concrete foundation.

What if we squatted up there

a couple of stories above

the workday autumn fleecing

ordinary people with taxes

and insurance and huge bills

for pumping out their septic tanks?

What if workers back on the job

found the house inhabited

by people who otherwise never

could afford to live by a lake?

Sunday’s a good day to squat.

Christian benevolence overflows,

so trespassers rarely get shot.

The mud-bottom smell comforts

with sighs and bubbles of gas

from leaf decay brown as the shoes

I wore to our wedding. Tonight,

while rain occlude the moonlight

and sizzles in the bluestone pit

where the new foundation will go,

we could listen in stilted dark,

perched like two pagan deities

far enough above the loneliness

to seduce it without thinking.