Mercury morning

The air drifts like sweet pine-resin molasses
The birds are softly atwitter
And the squirrels are now appearing on the curtelage of my vision
I sit and sip my morning tea
As the thick musk of the lake rises up on vapors from the water's surface
Singing, "Peace, peace, peace."

Suddenly, the sound of pickups bump across the cracked pavement
Barrelling clumsily down the road behind me
They are pulling fiberglass bass boats on trailers, wizzing down the roadway,
Around the turn and on down to the boatramp
Where droopy-eyed men immerse their crafts sensuously
Into the green-grey water of the lake,
Smelling sweetly of diesel, algae and detrius,
To undertake their pursuit of those silver piscine phantoms
Which slyly hide among the crisp, green grasses and leggy cattails;
Their hopes springing eternal.

The fat engines broiling through the churn of the prop in the water,
Those fat, old boys are sitting precariously on spindly limbs in chairs
Tossing their hopeful lures along the shoreline,
Out and back, out and back, out and back, in ponderous rythmn,
Disturbing the sleep of the alligator watchmen slipping cautiously below the waters
As they pull a second cold one out of the box behind them
In an effort to silence the echoes of those beers
Consumed during the previous evening's meanderings
Which left the dark shadows below their heavy eyelids
And moved them to hit the throttle on the outboard engine
A little harder this time

And so they permanently cracked the crystal silence I had blissfully enjoyed
Before they broke the sweet rapture
With their rude motoring on this formerly quiet, early Summer morning.