Excerpt from Palpitations by Thomas Leduc: "My Northern Lake"
My Northern Lake
Thomas Leduc
Come with me, I’ll show you beauty, show you life,
show you where the loon swallows the sun
and the moon sits in the eye of a snowy owl.
Painted trees shimmer across the landscape,
setting the lakes on fire. Here every
stroke of our paddle slices the water’s skin,
pushes away our wounds.
Come with me to undo
the knots of our everyday lives,
to set our stresses free to float
in fresh water, bundle up at the mouth
of a river like a well-woven nest
cradling our anxieties
in its broken-fingered hand.
Come with me, we’ll trickle through the dam
like eyelashes blinking in the sun.
We’ll meet the day together,
leave our pasts behind,
be baptized by the boreal.
I’ll stir your soul and you can stir mine,
until our muscles hurt, until the sun sets,
until our breath turns to frost and the water to ice.
Come with me, to my northern lake,
where time drifts away on a youthful dream
and sets us free, for a while.
“My Northern Lake” is excerpted from Palpitations by Thomas Leduc copyright © 2025. Reprinted by permission of Latitude46. For more information, please visit latitude46publishing.com.
About Palpitations:
There are moments that change the course of a day, a year, or even a life.
Palpitations explores the journey through the twists and turns of the human experience. From childhood memories of struggling with dyslexia and what to be when one grows up, reflections on love, to the global disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Thomas Leduc delves into the shared experiences that have altered the world’s perception of itself. Full of vivid imagery and deep, thoughtful reflections, Palpitations is a tribute to that which makes us human – moments that palpitate with life, longing and change.
About Thomas Leduc:
Thomas Leduc was Poet Laureate of Sudbury, Ontario from 2014-2016 and the President of the Sudbury Writers’ Guild from 2017-2021. His poems and short stories have been published in various magazines and anthologies. In 2019 he released his first collection of poetry, Slagflower Poems Unearthed From A Mining Town (Latitude 46). He lives in Sudbury, Ontario.