Rendezvous at Crater Lake

by Erik Lloyd Olson

We were to make our peace in solitude,
as if the lake of still, chameleon dyes
could be our arbiter of compromise.
Light-headed from the alpine altitude,
I stood close to the brink, at length, and viewed
where distant monster shadows shifted size
and knuckles of red rock approached the skies
until a gust broke off my quietude.
I was still waiting underneath a roof
of pines, past time, was mad you never showed;
you felt stood up, like me, but down the road.
A crater laid between us—vast, aloof.
We left the lake, each echoing the same

contention as before, the other was to blame.

Erik Lloyd Olson is a writer and teacher living in the Pacific Northwest. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Avatar Review, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Rat’s Ass Review, Autumn Sky, and The Road Not Taken, among other literary journals. He studied poetry at Portland State University, as well as at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters under poet David Biespiel.