A request from Brad Formaker

Augur Lake

Standing almost at the top of 

Poke-O-Moonshine Mountain,

the Ausable Chasm in white-out from the fog,

it is easy to imagine the time before the Europeans came,

before a different type of white-out.

When the sun peeks over the mountain, lifting the fog,

the houses appear, the roads, the cars,

but one can still imagine the European immigrants,

the French priests and German trappers,

later, the frightfully greedy land seekers.

One can grasp the meaning of paradise lost.

Augur lake was everything to them,

bathtub in the summer,

a shortcut during winter,

source of food and fun.

Glacier-carved,

darkly deep, two pikes wide at one end,

shallow sunfish small at the other,

a channel or a cove here and there.

As it aged, that lake had its mysteries,

ate a human or two every year,

sucked them down into the weeds,

In late spring, early summer,

before vacationers’ traffic clouded the surface,

one could drift idly,

see the ancient tree stumps below,

wonder what the land was like before the floe.

If one had a motor,

or a young person’s energy,

you could get out to that island,

now made private,

where the best fishing and sunbathing was.

You’d see birds of every type,

small crabs near the shore,

could stare at the sky,

see where it joined the water, 

and if you stayed out late enough,

watch that lake swallow the sun,

waiting for the star show,

catching a night bonfire up the hill.

That lake was everything to its people,

and I bet, on still days,

it served as a mirror

for God’s morning primp.