Transfiguration

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.