Sobriety: Prelude

A loon keens across Fox Lake
asking if it’s alone,
bell-clear and wolf-like.
On a moored pontoon
at one a.m., alone but still drinking,
I turn my head toward the sound,
but Laurentian night is the kind of dark
that dissolves a place.
I look up at the brightest stars,
let my eyes adjust to the median,
then strain at the ones I’m not sure exist.
This feels important.
Everything does half-stupor,
and everyone here started early,
though I’m the only one still at it.
They say drowning
doesn’t look like drowning. It’s placid
and quiet. I’m at the edge of
buoyancy, minutes from dissolution.
I’m leaving something in the watershed;
some spiritual seepage, some parts
per million the Mississippi will carry
down-continent and into the Gulf
to disperse like micro plastics
in a collapsing Atlantic current.