Is this my lake? Is this the clear water of my reflective self? Tall water moving. Old water sleeping. The reservoir of being. When I picture a container, perhaps it should be a lake: spring-fed stream flowing in, river estuary flowing out, standing in the footprint of mountain ranges, mirroring my silver soul with the upside-down summits. What dreams are bourne across those waters, what secrets buried in their depths? The echoes of any sound I make can be heard from miles off, transmitted in a perfect crystalline whisper. I brook no interruptions in my musings but my mermaid mind merges with the waves of millfoil. Mine is a feathery, rolling sea, and if I were standing on a moor in England the heather tossing in the wind would remind me of it, as alfalfa and mugwort do, in the sighing fields of home. 'The tide! The tide!' young Keats would bellow, from the lookout of a pasture stile, and I would bound with him, pointing out the undersides of leaves visible on the nearest oak or maple, meaning that a storm is on the way.