The Oasis

The locals called the pond The Oasis although

It didn’t live up to the name.

Water green as an old penny and thick

With algae, hugged by a grove of thin birch trees, a small pond

That fed into a stream and disappeared

Through a concrete cylinder under the wide paved road

That led out of town.

Men used to come, with six-packs of beer and rubber boots

To fish for the trout old man Pilch had put in even though

It hadn’t been his pond to stock. But

That didn’t stop him from pulling up one day in his truck and dumping

A box of colored trout, one by one with his bare hands

Into the water.

The field next to the pond had been Pilch’s, and

He had grown potatoes on it with his son

But now the bank owned it, the bank had eaten

Old man Pilch, and his son, and the field and

Spit out their bones

Like an owl who had caught three mice, fitting them, all three

Into its widely opening cheeks.

To get to The Oasis you had to cross the field, fermenting now

With wildflowers and ragweed, navigating the bony scattering of bushes

Bearing their tiny painful brambles, your eyes

Cast down for snakes

A sign, For Sale—Will Build To Suit, sunk into the dirt by the side of the road

Had been there for years and someone had spray painted

James K eats farts across it in a truculent reddish purple.

Teenagers destined for greatness or sadness or an early death

Who crept out to the pond at night with flashlights

Left empty bottles of Fireball whiskey and flavored

Cigar wrappers, glossy McDonald’s fry containers and sometimes

A used condom.

Flies and bees buzzed about the colorful garbage, glinting

Like warmed treasure in the sun.

Old man Pilch had passed

Going on three years now and during the day

It was quiet—the pond grown

Too thick with green stench and the cat tails too tall

For the men to fish anymore.

The pond was sinking into its own oblivion or maybe

The pond was changing its very nature, following after Pilch himself.

Either way

I was surprised to meet her, the girl on the pond’s shore.

I guess I’d taken to considering the place mine during the day.

Yes it certainly felt like it was mine—and it felt right to feel that way—as if

After old man Pilch died

The pond longed to be coveted again

By someone to whom it didn’t belong.

Of course, the pond shore wasn’t a shore at all

In truth it was nothing but a giant sandy anthill, still

There she was perched atop it

A small pale girl with a front tooth missing

Hair the color of butter and cheeks crisping in the sun, her eyes

Skimmed milk sitting in two large, blue saucers.

She had surrounded herself with a circle

Of naked Barbie dolls.

She looked up at me stoically and said

For his crimes he has to walk the plank

And indeed she had a small piece of lumber angled

From the hump of the anthill down into the pond, and solemnly

She walked a single male doll down that rectangle

And walked him into the water, her narrow hand and forearm disappearing

Briefly into that thick green sludge leaving, as she pulled it out,

The doll to suffer its fate.

It began this way, just me

Observing her small, strange ritual and her, watching mine

Which was to crack open just one nip of vanilla vodka

And light just one, and then just one more, wide Camel cigarette

And then rinse with a swig of the preposterously blue mouthwash I spat

After, with an attempt at grace—

If spitting can ever be a graceful act—into the sand at my feet.

And in the way I didn’t ask her about how she found her religion

She didn’t ask me about the origin of mine and we shared the dying

Pond that day, the pond sinking

Into its own oblivion and when I returned the following day she was there

As well, and waiting, it seemed, and the pond it seemed

Was waiting also and soon

I sat with her inside the mandala of naked Barbies

Brushing the biting ants off my legs, watching

Several more plastic men go into that accursed drink

Sun shining off her hair, that pale yellow hair

The color of the yolk of a sick egg, milk blue eyes blinking

In concentration, as I inhaled my cigarette

And exhaled the smoke on the doll’s faces which the girl said

Would help to cleanse them.

Eventually she ran out of the men dolls and so we entertained ourselves

By dragging an ancient, peeling red rowboat, beached up in the birch grove,

Down to the pond and pushing it in.

There was only one oar and the boat took on water

Very slowly the dark green water.

We kicked our feet in it and I told her how, a long time ago

When I was her age

I had a salamander that had grown too large for his tank, too

Ravenous for the small brine shrimp and nightcrawlers I slipped

Under the glass into that moist void at night and so I released him

Into this very pond.

The girl thought about this, her blue-white eyes staring intently

At the putrid water while I slogged

The oar through the algae, thick as dry yarn balls and

Whenever the water rippled here or there underneath the green filth she exclaimed

Maybe that’s him

And we both imagined him, the salamander, each time she said it.

Each time she said it we saw him, grown huge and scaled and dark

Circling the bottom of the rank green pond

Feeding on the corpses of the dead trout, lived

Beyond his natural life, forgotten

By both life and death

A wingless dragon, dark lord

King of The Oasis

—and weren’t we his Queens?

Weren’t we, mirroring his slow dark circles below with ours

In the boat above, sun burning our cheeks

Toes wrinkling in the thick water that slowly

Filled the bottom of the old, peeling red boat, and

The girl looked at me and how could she have thought

The exact same thing, how

And at exactly the same time, but

She did

And she answered well, we are his Queens and she answered

Without speaking a word and her eyes were nothing more

Than the Earth itself, seen from outside itself, and doubled,

Blue and white spheres filled

Just so utterly filled with life.

And so we sat, and circled the wretched pond

As though tracing the shape of the crowns

On our heads, listening

To the occasional car gun

Down the wide paved road that led out of town, the branches

Of the birch trees softly shuddering

The ring of naked dolls on the shore watching over us and

If you asked me how it was her ritual had worked, the physics of it

Or the math I couldn’t

Even hazard a guess but

The dolls’ faces had become, somehow

Our very own faces

Bitten into and into

By the tireless ants, motionless

Cleansed

Sitting without blinking in a circle that moved nowhere

Both nowhere and everywhere at once.