The Ice Is Off the Lake

May 14 2018

Early morning

and the ice is off the lake.

Half past 4

when it's hard to know

if I'm an owl or a lark,

a bright-eyed early riser

or restless insomniac.

When the windless air

has cooled enough

you can feel its improbable weight,

like a thick quilt

settling over the world

and holding it still.

And when you wonder, looking up

if the night has begun its softening

that thin grey light

that hints of dawn

stealing-in from the east.

When an ululation of loons

erupts from the depths

somewhere out in the dark,

a haunting sound

that chills

                    . . . elates

                                        . . . and tempts.

That seems to declare

they own the place,

unafraid

and fully at home.

While the old canoe

down by the shore

has been grounded since late in the fall;

its thin canvas skin

weathered by the elements,

its faded paint, once brilliant red

now scraped and pinged.

Too cold

to venture out

in this mean and grudging spring.

And while the canoe lay buried in snow

who knows where the loons stole away,

stubby wings, straining up

feathers trailing spray.

But now, the lake is entirely theirs;

serenely at ease in the water

impervious to glacial cold.

How unnatural

to see it beached

upside down, and still,

this frugally elegant craft

that even at rest

appears to be in motion.

If it could,

would it right itself

slip into the shallows

drift out among the birds?

Would it perch lightly upon the lake

at the mercy of wind and wave,

silently demure

rocking gently back and forth?

Or, like them

would it wail and waver and trill?

After a season interred

beneath the snow,

I can hear the lake

calling it home.