Great Salt Lake / Neighbors by Dane Karnick

Great Salt Lake

My stepfather parks
Our family Buick
Past the southern shoreline

To revere those mud flats
Reflecting turquoise
Along unbroken sky

While killdeer chase brine flies
Across the belly
Of lakes come and gone

Their white crystals spread wide
Toward Wasatch Mountains
As we talk about his dad

Drinking in the barn
Through many afternoons
But the words dry up like

Most of our conversations
So we stare at the wind
Raiding nooks and crannies

Over limestone ridges that
Interrupt the saline plains
Constant as human anguish




Neighbors

Some staff say the phantom
Is a congressman who jumped
Out of his fifth-floor office
In the Arctic Hotel
To stay as a resident
From the other side
Of reason fractured
In this gold rush building

Where the elevator goes
To his level empty
From days of his mood swings
Championing the needy
Among billiard rooms
And smoky card tables
He persists in some way
To follow guests around

With his erratic state
Freezing corridors and
Scuffing a path across
The floor that divides
His home from our world
Rooted through his rootless soul
Who fades in and out of
What we think we know

Dane Karnick grew up by the Colorado “Rockies” and has lived in the Seattle area for 30 years. His poetry has appeared in publications like One Art, Umbrella Factory and The Poetry Box.