Across the placid surface of the boiling lake
Is spread a thin miniscus, a flimsy film,
More sheer than late Spring ice, and which is constantly
Dissolving, melting or evaporating just behind you,
Compelling you to move towards the distant shore,
Tight-roping on these fine yet thicker veins, the scars of former fissures.
Only almost in earshot, in the corner of your eye,
The boiling lake is variously discharged,
Its roiling waters roaring through the turbines of twelve dams,
Each named after a virtue as defined by its contructors:
“Wealth”, “Punishment”, “Obedience” - you get the point.
Their watchtowers seem spindly through the mounds of crashing spray.
And skimming, sliding, skating, stumbling or skidding across the lake
You can glance down crystal clearly into its churning depths
Where hulking, looming things embroil themselves in orgies of destruction.
Some intermittently float up to batter at you right beneath your feet,
Regular nearby rending noises alerting you to others, just like you,
Going under through a fissure, in a final, tiny blur of blue and red.
Yet you tiptoe on, only microns from the maelstrom’s greedy not-caring-less,
Still safe, right at this moment, closer to the distant dark and sunlit shore,
And there isn’t any other lake, there are no landscapes
Conceivable, constructable, feasible beyond what’s here,
Ameliorated, nonetheless, by amalgamated acts of random kindness
So, laughing with exhilaration and loving every second you’ve got left, you race on.