Looking At The Lake

 

I am looking at Lake George, New York, while walking its careless, distraught contour.

I see the immensity of its beauty, carried over thousands of years.

A magnificent work of God bestowed with long-lasting splendor,

To remind man of his banishment from heavens.

 

A lake is God’s message of how sublime he can be.

An envelope of water mirroring human life.

It has life’s fullness, circumference, inner turmoil, and external storms.

It has infinite expressibility; it has points of personality but it is its wholeness which communicates with us.

A lake does not tell us what it is; to different observers it is their own projection of it.

It is a body of water with purpose, but with a demeanor of purposelessness.

 

Lake George is a masterstroke of imagination;

Reminding its visitors, from generation to generation,

The power and benevolence of nature over our lives.

A mirror we can hold to see ourselves in it.

 

I stand before the lake and

Wonder at the nature of nature,

And man’s relevance in the cosmic scheme.

 

I have roamed around the planet earth for many decades

And am now near the last turns of my end.

 

My life is only a little tale in the infinite tapestry of universe,

Which I have tried to keep in check from the human vanity and ego.

I look at the lake and feel an eternity grab me,

My life seems to be an infinite ribbon forever uncoiling.

 

Reflected in the lake I see the colossal cosmos aglow in inhuman splendor,

Its apparent infinitude dazzles the senses out of me,

Its mystery mesmerizes me to a permanent wonder.

 

In the lake I see an arrest of the cosmic splendor,

A micro-capsule of the energy and enigma of universe.

 

Why is universe as it is, why was it made in the first place.

The absurdity of these questions is apparent, as universe does not have a human mind.

It exists by its design, it is aglow by its own light.

It has always been there and it will always be there.

 

For man to understand these things is a liberation from earthly shackles,

A reunion with eternity, a stepping into the cosmic dance.

 

Human life was not meant to be lived as it is generally,

Man carries too much worthless baggage with him –

The artless designs of his scheming brain.

Man stands as a caricature of his natural majesty,

A wasted spark in the worldly morass.

 

A lake is controlled mass but with infinite expressions,

It is a circumscribed possession but forever echoing liberation,

Its circumference aches to expand, its surface desires to dance off to evaporation,

Its feet are on ground but its heart is dancing to the other drummer,

It appears static but it is a dynamic state of shifting masses.

A lake is a cosmic dance with a human face.

 

A lake is ripeness at ease with itself,

Grace forever held by its weight.

It aspires the dance of waves but is content to remain within its shores,

Freedom never squandered in rash adventures of an ocean or a river.

 

If man could only be like a lake,

Finite but soaring in its spirit,

Bounded but bursting to expand,

Possessed but with flexible circumference,

Static in composure but dynamic in disposition,

Effervescent in its longings but controlled in its demeanor.

 

A lake is brimming with hope that tomorrow will be better,

Because its guts have churned enough and its bosom has heaved enough,

Its patience has stretched long,

And has no theatrics to play.

 

A lake is a human condition,

Structured yet fluid,

Like life a lake is just a ripple across time,

Where imagination gives it context and meaning.

A lake is a slice of human heart resting on god’s little fingers.