Black Pool

by Ivy Grimes

I hear about a black pool
just off a hiking trail nearby, the blackest
black, and naturally
I ask if it's run-off from coal mines
or a dump for a chemical plant,
but they tell me, "You must never
confuse its beauty with a pollutant."

They say it is like a mood ring stone
when your hands are cold,
a shining, obfuscating black
the government will investigate,
in the meantime everyone says
I should hike out and see it.

I say I will.
I don't even like plain blue lakes
or the moon or fireworks
lakes sometimes reflect.

But still. Out there—the cool,
the dark marble lake:
it could be fuel for a spaceship,
or a home to albino fish
and plants the color of glow sticks.
I could fall in
and, open-eyed, sleep.

Ivy Grimes received her MFA from the University of Alabama. She has poems published and forthcoming in The Cimarron Review, Euphony, The Associative Press, Weave, WomenArts Quarterly Journal, and elsewhere.