A Poem for a Monday

     A Boat
     Margaret Atwood

     Evening comes on and the hills thicken;

     red and yellow bleaching out of the leaves.
     The chill pines grow their shadows.

     Below them the water stills itself,
     a sunset shivering in it.
     One more going down to join the others.

     Now the lake expands
     and closes in, both.

     The blackness that keeps itself
     under the surface in daytime
     emerges from it like mist
     or as mist.

     Distance vanishes, the absence
     of distance pushes against the eyes.

     There is no seeing the lake,
     only the outlines of the hills
     which are almost identical,

     familiar to me as sleep,
     shores unfolding upon shores
     in their contours of slowed breathing.

     It is touch I go by,
     the boat like a hand feeling
     through shoals and among
     dead trees, over the boulders
     lifting unseen, layer
     on layer of drowned time falling away.

     This is how I learned to steer
     through darkness by no stars.

     To be lost is only a failure of memory.