Poems by Phil Harford

Mirror Lake

by Phil Harford

From Canary Summer 2023

Phil resides in the Great Bay watershed of the Seacoast region of New Hampshire, the ancestral homeland of the Penacook-Abenaki people. Grateful that a plan for a massive oil refinery at Great Bay was blocked in 1974 through the efforts of three remarkable women, Phil enjoys hikes through preserved forests and saltmarshes and nearby ocean beaches.

It was half a century
before I returned
to Mirror Lake,
where the water
was so clear
I was sure I swam
airborne
and could see
the scales on the sunfish
as I floated overhead,
though maybe it was the sunfish
that were floating over me
since above and below were
one in the same
and each cloud and tree
was as perfect in the mirror
as it was in the sky.
But now I stand on the shore
and the water looks murky
like a memory that has grown old
and tries to remember the way
it used to be
before time spoiled
the pure spaces
and above and below were
two separate places.