water is not a mirror and it is dangerous to think so - Anne Carson

 

Understanding a lake as a mirror

is an incomplete understanding of a lake.

 

A lake is a thing which holds

as in two hands cupped to hold water

 

from a lake to a mouth

which is the start of the river

 

of the body.

 

The music water makes

toneless slapping against the shore.

 

Notation, like a river, is a system

documenting how we move

 

from one place to the next.

Though, thinking of a river

 

as a record of events

is an incomplete understanding

 

of time. Once, the Megunticook River

powered factories that produced

 

gunpowder. Once, the Megunticook River

meant “Big Mountain Harbor”

 

in Wabanaki. Now, a land acknowledgement

does its best to understand violence.

 

Looking out over the harbor,

the sun sets and makes of itself

 

an impressionist painting in the water

though imagery remains

 

an incomplete understanding of an image.

My body buoyed by the tide—

 

how to understand time, a black ship

floating through the ecosystem of night?

 

Time as the rocks you cannot see

under the water.

 

Time as a cliff children leap from

in the distance

 

and emerge from the water as memories.

To understand a lake as its history

 

is an incomplete understanding

of joy.

 

To understand anything at all

is to miss the water

 

for what it reflects.

To swim out into the middle of the harbor

 

where you can stand on an uninhabitable island.

To be alone in the center of a story

 

or at the mouth of a river

or at the cusp of knowing

 

or not knowing, not really.

To fill your mouth with lakewater

 

and come to no conclusion

searching for a shape that looks like you

 

in the sky.