Dusk On Loukes Lake

Dusk On Loukes Lake
(for Kathleen)

thin spirits of mist
rise immobile
on a lake flooded to ice
by the calm

water bugs skate in circles
to a waltz
of their own signature

my canoe glides
on the echoes of a setting bronze sun
mirroring undulations
roll in my wake to the shore

in the shadow of the bay
a loon draws a silver thread through the silhouette of a white pine
nature’s bottom line

dead ahead lies the rock
inverted
on which one morning last month
you sat panting
water running down your waist-length blonde hair
eyes bright with triumph and surprise
a nine year–old
who has conquered her lake

The whip-poor-will from nowhere
calls three times
capsizing the walls of time

I float
downside-up
in a darkening world
drowning in
the reflected beauty of your mother

Hindsight is shifty-fifty
The past a shore too far to swim
The dawn too far to paddle

 

 


Guy Sprung is a Montréal theatre/film director, writer and actor.  He directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which ran for 11 years in Russian at the Pushkin Theatre in Moscow. Also directed the original production of Balconville in Montréal. Guy wrote and directed “On Guard for Thee,” an award-winning CBC radio docudrama, and directed Oscar-winner William Hurt in Richard III.