Summer sun and monsters, there is no better combination.
No tastier August treat than the chill of seeing its shadow
cast down on the sand under the window-clear surface of the lake.

Somewhere a loon laughs at my bad luck,
to be out on the boat with the monster.
My spine is as cold as the water, and I feel it
rippling in my back. Blue-black shadows
are all I can know of it, that and the way
the air changes like a chord when it comes
and my red sunburn itches like it was blue.

Sometimes it scatters itself, into a school
or long eel strips, striping the sand, long
whips, string skin, somewhere an eagle pipes
their eel-thin whistle before diving, but never
diving here.

Some thing is down there, even when it masquerades
as myriad things before rejoining to a mammoth whole,
silently laughing at my net while it throws pieces of itself
here and there to grab an unsuspecting perch,
to pull the metal leg out from under a dock and crush it.

Someone says, "It was just rust. These old docks,
this endless water." But they didn't see the shadow limb
reach out and pull and press like it was a can.
This thing that I only know from its shadows and its damage,
that I cannot name the shape of, or the color, whose
sound is only silence and the rush of a sheer pelican
flight in fright, the sound of a hawk screaming, the waves
gently lapping against my boat, tip-tapping out a threat
of a stronger wind than I can row against.