I will miss your repertoire of gentle or high rising waves,
days you host heron, minnows, sandpipers and gulls,
all your nightly offerings outside our summer window–
loon calls from dark distances or near coves.
Now, with summer’s end I must step away. Good bye.
But through the miles I will dream your water
as it turns toward ice, your first freeze, shifts and creaks
in pounding cold. Around your shores
survival will show in the tall pines.
Inside our own shuttered place pots and dishes, rugs
and blankets, all things temporarily not needed,
will freeze and thaw, freeze and thaw
while you stay solid as the deep season lingers.
By winter’s end who will know how soon
your ice will first melt and on what edges,
when your deeply frozen mass will crack
and when wind will force your ice to form tall walls
that heave and collapse along the shores.
In spring we will be back for surprises
we will not have guessed.
Published in “Blueline Literary Magazine” of the Adirondacks, 2017