black domes are hard hats floating on oil

asphalt seeps upwards    methane hemispheres

erupt where the dark lake expels its secrets

in, in and down: a police diver ferrets

for clues – Beowulf hunting Grendel’s mother

lake-hag nursing wordless grief

             in a bog boiling with her son’s blood
get down.  get out.  time arches its back

open-mawed    Smilodon fatalis

a hovering Cheshire cat    he can’t shake off

the thought that something stalks him in this pit

bared teeth    hot breath of a predator

a dire-wolf snarling down

             through murky water
this thing he dredges up    turns slowly

in his hands    a fragment of mammoth-tusk

rodent-toes     treasure-trove snatched

from the walls of a black cave

             or the weapon that could nail a homicide?
crude oil bubbles upwards    punctures

the lake’s meniscus    he could be mired too

fins sunk to the bottom    melded

with curled ferns and ice-age bones

in movement is salvation     fossil words

trapped like ants in amber   while his brain

             grows fur    deep wells of tangled bone  
dazed    out of body    light-headed now

methane welling around him

he can barely see his fingers beyond the mask

above    men huddle over sonar maps

metal detectors    wait for his return

the communication line’s stuck in sludge

             but all the signals point to something   
crude oil makes mountains of itself

stalagmites belch promises

he squeezes them like a lover

and they mouth answers

             in a dead language