Come, said the lake

A poem after a long a break

Dear Reader,

I’m happy to be back after an extended absence. Let me cut right to the chase: after three consecutive years of keeping vigil for the imperiled Great Salt Lake, night and day during the Utah State Legislative sessions, I collapsed. Not just for a day or a week but for the better part of three months. At first, it was simply exhaustion, and then I got sick.

A titanium implant in my jaw led to a two-month infection, an episode I now think of as “the poisoning.” I’m much better now. While the metal post was in, I grew pale and faint and felt as if I was my own ghost. Each night, I felt like a black hole in my mouth was trying to swallow me up. I awoke aching all over as if I had spent the night hours wrestling. Neither god nor angel, just my own messed up jawbone, but still— I could not laugh, sing, or write.

The poem I’m sharing today reflects a two-year-long conversation with the lake, including the morning she said, Stop them from poisoning me. I was sitting on my floor cushion just after meditation when I heard those words clearly and knew they were not mine. Over the years of vigil-keeping, I have received this kind of direct communication only a handful of times, all of which are recorded in this poem. Listened to the lake, I have been prompted to action many times, but rarely have I received instructions in English.

Stop them from poisoning me.

Who exactly is she referring to? Who is doing the poisoning? Could be any number of many extractors or wetland pavers, but in this case, I believe the lake especially means Rio Tinto, the owneres and operators of the world’s deepest open-pit mine, visible to the naked eye from space. If you fly into Salt Lake City, you can’t miss it: an entire mountain has been desecrated and inverted, a colossal scar. The Oqquirh range looks like a set of teeth with the biggest molar missing. The ore is continuously processed at a towering smelter right on the shore, leaving a lakebed laden with heavy metal. According to the Rio Tinto website, “The mine operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.” The poisoning never stops.

I’ll say here what I said to the lake, I don’t know how to stop it.

Even so, this experience has given me an entry into growing my lake-facing empathy. I won’t soon forget what it felt like when my body was trying to expel the metal. For now, I am willing to stumble as I figure out ways to witness it. I’ll try to help pull this danger into the light. We can’t mend what we can’t see. It’s hard to miss the world’s biggest mine, and yet I have been looking right past it for most of my life. Not anymore. I will begin to witness this abyss: there will be more to say.

Meanwhile, dear reader, thank you for your own sacred attention. The poem also includes expressions of the lake’s courage and even humor. I hope you will hear the clear voice of the lake in it.

love,

nan

p.s. An earlier version of this poem has just been published in Toad Hall Edition’s kerning/ a space for words. I’m delighted to have work in this stunning journal alongside so many writers I admire.

p.p.s. Thank you, Julie Gabrielli, from Homecoming, for reaching out with your beautiful questions. Your gentle inquiry gave me a path back to the page. You are a lamp in the dark.

Photo credit: Anna Pocaro Photography

Come, said the lake

stay with me 
between wolf moon 
and snow moon.

I borrowed a camper 
and crossed the causeway, 
a hesitant witness
willing to hospice.  
My first day there
she made it plain.

I’m not ready. 
This isn’t peaceful. 
I am fighting for my life.

Then Russia attacked Ukraine.

I wasn’t calling you especially.
You just happened to be listening on the other side of the line.
I’ve been calling for help on all channels, 
hoping to reach someone, anyone. 

I stayed with her the rest of that arid winter. 

Call the others, she said. 
When I did, 
you came. 

After that season, 
there was even less water
striated bays
platforms of life exposed
great saline reefs 
dying on all sides. 

When summer came along, she said Sing,
sing together, 
from shorelines and riverbanks.

I glanced over my shoulder. 
You must be talking to someone else, 
I don’t know how to do that.

I’m talking to whoever will listen.
You’re listening.  
So I opened my mouth and made sounds
but the noise did not inspire confidence. 

Get a teacher, said the lake. 

Your belly is a singing bowl, my teacher said,
your heart and lungs another 
and so is your head. 
They taught me how to ring all three
and I felt myself resonate. 
After a while, I dared to lead songs. 

When the lake didn’t say I told you so, 
I admired her restraint. 

Next solstice
I set out to greet her before dawn.
In the dark I couldn’t see her 
so I followed her voice. 
Winding my way between starry puddles 
I walked where the sea should have been, 
walked faster across patches 
of boot-sucking sand. 
At last at her lapping, 
I heard don’t count me out!

When she called for snow, 
I couldn’t hear her. 
She wasn’t talking to me. 
She was calling on old familiars,
weather makers, she has conspired with for epochs.

Snow, 
I will die if you do not bring it. 
They brought it. Thank you, she said. 
You’re welcome, here’s more, said her kin. 
Thank you, and then more again. 
This conversation went well into spring. 

This morning, she broke a long silence between us.

Remove the tourniquet.
Stop them from poisoning me. 
I don’t know how to do that, 
I said once again. 

In the quiet 
I might have heard her sigh 
before she said it
Remember, 
how you thought you couldn’t sing?


*a conversation between Great Salt Lake and nan seymour which took place between 
fall 2021- summer 2023