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.