emergent ink

Every morning, my drive to work takes me over the causeway between Squantz Pond and Candlewood Lake. Sometimes, I slow down and take a photograph of Squantz Pond. It’s always the same view, and never the same.

The water was still today, and I knew I’d get a good reflection. I didn’t think it would be this good. The only changes I made were to level the image by rotating it one degree counter-clockwise, and to apply auto levels and auto color in Photoshop.

Like someone who opens a door of glass
or sees his own reflection in it
when he returns from the woods
the light falls so variously here at the end of October
that nothing is whole or can be made into a whole
because the cracks are too uncertain and constantly moving.

Then you experience the miracle
of entering into yourself like a diamond
in glass, enjoying its own fragility
when the storm carries everything else away
including the memory of a freckled girlfriend
out over the bluing lake hidden behind the bare hills.
- Henrik Nordbrandt, The Glass Door
Translated by Thomas Satterlee