The Limnologist

She conjures forth bubbles

of fire from frozen lakes.

I heard it on the radio,

circling the dark lanes

of a parking deck

at dusk. A big blue

Suburban nearly backed

into me as I listened to her

talk about the flare

of methane against

the Siberian sky,

just above tables

of dense Russian ice,

and how she freed

the gas from the face

of the invisibly

percolating lake. She is in love

with “the power of water

in its frozen and

unfrozen forms,” and she

unlocks it, standing back

as it lets her have itself—

a propulsion of conjured chemistry,

beloved and unsettling,

a threshold of flow, an ascent

of alchemical liquid strong

enough to free boulders

with the rise of its release.

©Laura Sorrells 2007--2012

all rights reserved