Transfiguration

Transfiguration by James Engelhardt The lake is only a lake because water. Time filled the valley, drowned the stream,  covered the sedges charging up the tree line. The lake is a lake because someone hauled rock  to some line they imagined, and now a boat glides  over that imagination past the lake’s edges and inlets. A sandhill crane angles through, tracing a path cranes have traced for millions of years. And the day is gone like a breath. The forest, too. The lake will drain. The boat will become earth—as will we, sitting in its belly,  watching what is strange become stranger. Poetry Home Art by Kathleen Frank