Equinox with River Otter

Little holes 
the hours punched into a snowfield.

I come back to myself 
in the middle—or older—

surrounded 
by the northern woods. 

In a ring of evergreens, the lake frozen
still. But 

where the light thins 
there’s work, 

an animal arriving from underneath. 
Rolling and muscled 

like music 
it will crack the ice 

like a star. My life adjusted without me 
knowing. And you—
 
who waited too— 
do you say the lake has broken 

or that the lake is opening?