A pond is a pond is a pond

One of my favorite places in Acadia National Park is Sargent Mountain Pond. It is accessible only by mountain trail, and lies between two open granite summits: Penobscot and Sargent. There's such a variation in environment compared to that of the long southern ridge of Penobscot, an open slope exposed to wind and sun and expansive ocean views. The pond is small and surrounded by trees. The wind is almost nonexistent in the col, and on a summer day, the proliferation of life there is such a contrast with the mountain's. Dragonflies and frogs are just the more obvious dwellers on this threshold. This Sunday was the first time I had ever seen the pond iced-over. It was such a change, but yet it wasn’t. That’s what this poem tries to relate.

Pondering the Medium

That Sargent Mountain Pond
lolls lushly in a col,
amid stark mountaintops,
provides the wherewithal
in place to call it mystic.
There’s such a pantheistic

conception to this spot.
Neither stream nor rill
supplies its source; it is.
Imagine if you will
this slight round pond no more
than fifty yards from shore

to shore and circumscribed
by birch and evergreen…
This April though I saw
its surface opaline
with ice, and pondered why
I deemed it still July.

Again I’m using language shorn of most imagery, kind of Donald Davie meets Li Po, tempered by my own inadequate dexterity. Having been blocked for many weeks though, I will take whatever comes my way. This was one that I needed to write in order to understand my own reactions to this frozen pond. My first was one of simple surprise. But there was an underlying sense of wonder which I felt yet could not verbalize. Why, despite the presence of ice, was there still a palpable warmth to the place?