surrender.

You cradle it with firm hands and stand where the lake nibbles eddies beneath your toes in the gritty New England mud.

The only way to know, now, if it will endure, is to let fly the expectation of unassailable assurance.

The freshwater breeze capers in your lungs in tandem with the choir of a blackbird tree. Your pulse thunders as you stretch and kneel, delicately capitulating to the insistent pull. You've brought it where it belongs.

You look at it for a moment, and wonder at the new emptiness in the hollow of your palms.

Turning, you haul the heavy cedar of your boat from a bed of flattened reeds and wet soil. The sun looks small today, you think, as you drift away from the shore, away from the stolid pines and the tranquil hum of mayflies, and a startling coolness envelops your feet as they rake the water's surface.