Swimming in Moon

Loons call, kick up spray,

running, on my fiftieth day

submerged in liquid

light.

The water a page,

my stroke the rhythm, a poem

that needs no words

I spend summer and fall immersed in the life of a lake. Each day I sit on a dock and dive into the water, regardless of weather, temperature, mood. Beneath the surface I find an entirely new realm of colour, movement, and relation, so I abandon my pen for a basic underwater camera.

Submerged plants dance as their reflections ripple in the glassy mirror of the water’s surface. Sunlight weaves through the water, illuminating, and often disrupting, the conventional lines of a photographic frame. Breath, motion, angles, and bubbles, change the colour and shape of the lake. The only constant I count on is that the plants will grow ever more skeletal when fall’s cool promise courts the summer air. 

I swim through the shifting seasons, my photographs a daily prayer, as I watch leaves sway — joyous? — in their cyclic decay.  

Everything is sacred when seen in the right light.