The Spring Blusters

I paddle off from the west end of the 'crossing over place'. Paddling the same waters as often as I do, I notice that new meanings become attached to familiar places, meanings that are often only temporary. Today, the 'crossing under place', the unfortunate 1916 creation that drained ten feet of lake takes on a new meaning with its angled concrete walls and what is the most handsome of our local drawbridges. A strong wind propels me through the cut, as it is commonly called, and I feel that I am paddling through a doorway, crawling through an opening in the hedge, or tumbling down a rabbit hole. And I leave the stagnate Portage Bay, its life choked by houseboats, marinas and fortified lake shore... and I enter the gardenwith all its birds and cattail islands
and beaver and the stunted tangled forests they create
and otters and eagles
and the places that have names that only I know.