SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue 1 - Journal - Page 110
Laurinda Lind
Black Lake at the Borderland
When the cabins down the lake
run out of clean linen for
customers, the owners call, we
all cover for each other, we might
lend out boat motors, too.
In spring the water rises up over
the road so we steer our cars
through the shallows. Over east but
west of the swamp, a white pine
soars above the crumbling asphalt
shoulder asking is anyone ever
going to paint it to canvas but
we can’t, for years we’re busy,
then it falls. In freezes this
close to Canada the ice
flings itself up against the shore
and you can climb down
between two kinds of land—
earth the water makes of itself
and rocks that floor the bay—
except it’s a way the lake
could take you, things change,
you could lose your life on
the cheap. That’s the trick,
to belong long but not overstay,
like the lake before this lake that
left its prehistoric fish, its gar
and its pike, sleeping in the gritty
bedsheets the glacier gave as fossil
layers up the hill along the ridge.
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