Lost Lake
- Author(s):
- Kateri Boucher
- Issue:
- On Epiphany (February 2025)
- Department:
- Inward Light
The pain of your heart rises up
like a snow-capped mountain,
incomprehensibly big against the pale blue sky.
You have walked those ridges before --
long days and nights stumbling around the boulders and brambles;
walked until your feet were calloused and bloody
and iced over from the cold.
You have watched forest fires ravage these peaks
as you stood helpless and small
in the crackling orange blaze.
You have laid down in the beds of ash that followed,
running your blistered hands among the blackened remains
and choking out salt water
until the air was too dry to speak
and your body was too tired to walk any further.
….But do you remember it is okay to rest?
Do you?
Do you remember the place where mountaintop ice melts into a slow, trickling stream?
Follow it down
over the cracked rocks and fallen tree trunks
of your heart,
until the air begins to warm
and the stream begins to rush with more certainty.
Follow it down
and eventually you will find a Lost Lake.
(Maybe it was lost, or you, but it doesn’t matter now).
Go to the place where the lake waters gently sigh against the earthy shore.
Sit.
Run your fingers through this soft, forgotten soil
and let the mud be a welcome mat to your grateful toes.
Be still, there.
And when you are ready,
wade deep into the water
until you find yourself resting in the middle of your own cupped hands.
Let yourself be held there.
Let the breeze remind you
how it feels to float.
Let the water remind you
how it feels to dance,
to laugh.
Look up now at your pain that rises in the distance,
still swelling and aching towards the sky.
From down here
do you remember
how kind of marvelous it is?
Kateri Boucher lives in Detroit/ Waawiyatanong ‒ “where the water goes around.”
She served in Boston as a Quaker Voluntary Service Fellow from 2017 to 2018. She is the Ministries Coordinator at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, a Master’s of Divinity Student at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, and the grateful caretaker of an opinionated tabby cat named Lucy.