forsaken deep in the sullen tide.

I dreamed the reason I can't step into ponds
for more than just the murkiness
and beef stew consistency of the water;
When I walked past the pillars of a white house
behind the hills I used to play in,
I wandered into tiled rooms containing vats
shaped and positioned like whirlpools, but deeper -
and in each tub, forgotten animals left to die
long after the owner had disappeared.

Bones and marrow, tendons and cartilage
left to seep in a putrid bath,
and when I made out the cloudy eyeballs of a horse
poking at me through the surface of such a stew
I thought - this is why it disgusts me.
How do you expect me to go barefoot or worse
in something like a bog or swamp, where fish or deer
fester and slowly leak out pieces of their decay?
Just because you can't see what rots
doesn't mean the green film covering
the rocks is all plant matter.

I would take a pool or a river any day,
where any corpses that might tumble in
could just be scooped up
in a sort of large aquarium net,
or even better, washed to a place downstream so quickly
there would be no chance of intestines
being caught between my flip-flops.