Common Loon by Emily Isaacson
It was haunting: a voice of the North had a face—
sounded its melancholy across the lake,
echoes of the fringe of black and white plumage in its wake,
the light and dark unmasked in queenly pace.
It was now summer and the campers had returned.
As the nature seekers pitched their tents from off their backs,
in the wilderness of the Adirondacks,
on Lake George, it was the iconic figure in black:
a miracle of crescendo in the sky concerned.
They had expected her classic portrait through the wine,
the deep oil on canvas, the triune colour,
her hidden nest near the forested body of water,
reflecting the wild and winsome throughout time.
Mournful, her loyalty resonated.
She carried her young under her wings,
she glided in a serene wake of water rings;
she was after the profundity of life without things,
and the North contracted, procreated.