"Being A Lake"
(Robert Wrigley)
He has never dreamed of being a lake
in the high mountains, and now he wonders why.
Surely there could be no better, in the way
of dreamy aspirations: to be clear and cold
and swum through by trout. To allow the sunlight
far into your depths, to have depths no one
will ever visit. To be ceilinged by ice
and many feet of snow in winter, to shine pure blue
into the pure blue of the sky, to show the stars
the stars, to be drunk by wild animals.
And to admit an occasional human,
who, because of the memory of having been there,
might dream of being there. Being there.
Not a visitor but a dreamer, dreaming
this very lake is what he’s always wanted to be.
"Being A Lake"
by Robert Wrigley,
from his volume of poetry,
(Penguin Books, 2017).
This poem was featured in Dan Keusal's
Autumn 2017 e-newsletter,