As stairs,

the stairs lead to nowhere.

Drab brown rails
standing in
the shallows —
uneven,

parallel bars
angling down into
and up and out of
this fishy lake.

Steps
down
into
the water

deep

above one’s head.

If one could walk beneath the lake
across from the far side,
hike along the red clay bottom
to ironically stroll the Wyse’s Ferry Bridge
over the Saluda River’s now forever-unmade bed —

saunter through the Saxe Gotha ghost town,
glide past its by-passed and
long-gone churches and schools,
homes and graveyards
before climbing this bank —

these stairs would do
to come out upon this side.

Maybe
an exit for
a flooded Southern subway? or
perhaps a sunken causeway used by
creatures from a bleak lagoon?
If,

if only
commerce could’ve been
between the beneath of a lake
and the above of a man-made reservoir
with a guy’s guy’s name like Lake
Murray.

(Bottom picture of the submerged Wyse’s Ferry Bridge is a sonar image taken from wikipedia.)