I love the phrase 'still pool.' Ponds, pools, and small lakes that evoke quiet reflection, moments taken for just 'being.' Bits of water have character, which influences the experience. I remember, when our family lived in Virginia, a lively, talkative stream that made its way past some willows and under a bridge near our house. And a bubbly spring at the home of a family friend that seemed to forever chortle under ferns and filtered sunlight. But still, quiet, non-stagnant pools? Those are hard to come by.

The day after our wedding in his hometown (or village, really), Mr. Inkslinger took me to the small lake he used to swim in as a boy. A still pool lying languid in the late autumn sunlight. It was afternoon too, so the rays reflected golden on the trees and water. Seeking to connect his new spouse with his old, childhood self, I suspect, he told me tales of loud, noisy children filling the stillness with laughter and much splashing.

This past weekend, we returned to the little lake (not an hour away is Mr. Inkslinger's past) so I could snap some shots of what had become in my memory an idyllic spot. Alas, it was on the wrong side of spring. The lake was still sleeping under ice. Still pool indeed.


Nonetheless, the cool air and icy shore did nothing to dampen our memories.

Which is all to say . . . it feels like a good day for a poem.

This one, by New Brunswick poet Elizabeth Brewster:

Where I Come From*

People are made of places. They carry with them
hints of jungles or mountains, a tropic grace
or the cool eyes of sea gazers. Atmosphere of cities
how different drops from them, like the smell of smog
or the almost-not-smell of tulips in the spring,
nature tidily plotted with a guidebook;
or the smell of work, glue factories maybe,
chromium-plated offices; smell of subways
crowded at rush hours.

Where I come from, people
carry woods in their minds, acres of pine woods;
blueberry patches in the burned-out bush;
wooden farmhouses, old, in need of paint,
with yards where hens and chickens circle about,
clucking aimlessly; battered schoolhouses
behind which violets grow. Spring and winter
are the mind's chief seasons: ice and the breaking of ice.

A door in the mind blows open, and there blows
a frosty wind from fields of snow.

*Found in the quite fascinating anthology, Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada.