What the Lake Knows
Written during a moment of writer’s block, this piece explores the tension between silence, observation, and the desire to create.
A flutter of silver vanishes before I can believe it—tadpoles zip around a bed of pebbles.
“I write with a pen that has no ink.
I write my name in the air
and shout it, but no voice comes out.”
—Mosab Abu Toha, “This Is Me!”, AGNI Magazine
A powder-blue sky yawns open. An ant, dragging a leaf larger than itself, stumbles onto the
sugared crust of a cheese danish I left behind. Maybe it has a colony to feed.
I flick a few crumbs from my lips into the grass as an offering.
The trees lean forward, and the dock does not creak when I sit. My notebook lies sun-warmed on
my lap, but the ink sits heavy inside my pen. The world moves, though my mind is anchored.
A flutter of silver vanishes before I can believe it—tadpoles zip around a bed of pebbles.
The paper stares back, still blank despite sitting for hours. A heron startles across the shallows.
Turtles tan in tight rows on flat rocks. The lake asks nothing of me, so I hold my silence.
My pen taps restless against my knee, chasing a rhythm the words refuse to follow.
The pen hovers, useless. A beetle tunnels into bark, certain of its own small mission. I shift, but
leave no mark. Even a line of geese can cut the sky with intention.
The sun has changed sides, yet I still can’t carve anything out of this quiet.
Process
This piece was originally written for my Workshop in Poetry class, where our theme centered on imitation—studying and emulating other poets as a way to refine our own voices. The poem later evolved through my participation in the Girls Write Now Multimedia Tour, specifically during a Photopoetry course that encouraged us to blend visual and written storytelling. Through that experience, I deepened my understanding of vital photography techniques—like lighting, framing, and timing—and began exploring how images and poems could enhance each other rather than stand apart. This poem is a quiet meditation shaped not just by words, but by the act of seeing.
