Cypress Lagoon

I followed a path to the edge of the lagoon just after the morning mist had lifted, and the world had settled into a rare kind of stillness. The water was a dark mirror—smooth and unbroken—reflecting the tall trunks of cypress trees that rose straight from its surface, their bark silver-gray in the quiet light. Lily pads drifted at the margins, and along the far bank, azaleas had burst into full color: red, pink, and magenta spilling through the greenery.

What struck me was the layering of it—the real and its reflection so perfectly matched that the image felt like something folded in half at the waterline. The trees above and the trees below. The flowers and their mirror image. There was a symmetry here that the eye could rest inside of, the kind of balance that arrives only when the wind is absent and the surface holds.

I waited for the light to stay low and soft, the way it does in the early part of a spring morning when the sun has not yet risen fully above the canopy. In that light, the colors were saturated without being harsh—rich and full, grounded rather than glowing. This is a place that rewards patience, and every time I stood at this edge, it gave me something different. This morning, it gave me everything at once.