Liturgical in its way, the lake unfolds, arising in wavelets in morning, changing with weather or time of day, without evidence of sorrow or blame. The water claims nothing for itself. Without hue or clear shape, it allows what gathers around it – air’s blue, palimpsests of horsetail in flight. Mud washes in from the Ottawa’s tongue, silting through. Summer sun beats the water to bronze. Where rocks curve, the lake bends. It sinks to its depths, evaporates or floods according to season and year. Even its storms bequeath hush. Scent of fish dying, algal bloom, clams broken on shore. Anything that passes through is transformed. Who watches, finally revealed. How self submerges itself, metaphor for mystery, drowning, escape.