"Reflection on the Lake"

Poems by Jianqing Zheng and Photos by William Ferris

Editor’s note: Line spacing becomes distorted on a mobile device, so I recommend reading these poems and viewing the accompanying photos on a desktop computer. You can read Jianqing Zheng’s Rooted Questionnaire here.

Wes Carter Lake, Warren County, Mississippi, 1974. Photograph by William Ferris, William R. Ferris Collection, Southern Folklife Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, used by permission, with all rights reserved.

Reflection on the Lake

       —William Ferris’s Wes Carter Lake, Warren County, Mississippi

It is a ripple of light and shadow
that deforms something 
or nothing in the breeze.

Even the clouds floating leisurely
need a moment to immerse 
their white robes in water.

Snapping shots by the lake,
I catch a moment of reflection
on the lake of the mind.

What's visual may not be
what's seen by the mind's eye.
In a sense, existence

is a state of nonexistence,
time is timeless, 
and root is rootless.

The reflection on the lake
dims out when the sun dips 
into its reflection, into darkness. 

---

Lee Cooper and Joe Cooper, Kent’s Alley, Leland, Mississippi, 1974. Photograph by William Ferris, William R. Ferris Collection, Southern Folklife Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, used by permission, with all rights reserved.

Couple

      —William Ferris’s Lee Cooper and Joe Cooper, Kent’s Alley, Leland, Mississippi

Love is molecules 
joining atoms 
for chemical reactions,

it’s plain life 
like they hold hands 
till old age, 

it’s oneness 
as staunch as their roots
gnarling together

like a delta blues song
dedicated to
wind and rain,

sun and moon,
and the flatland
underfoot.

---

Jianqing Zheng is the author of A Way of Looking (Silverfish Review Press, 2021), Enforced Rustication in the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Texas Review Press, 2019), Delta Sun (Red Moon Press 2018), and The Landscape of Mind (Slapering Hol Press, 2002). His edited books include Conversations with Dana Gioia, African American Haiku, The Other World of Richard Wright, and Sonia Sanchez’s Poetic Spirit through Haiku. He is a professor of English at Mississippi Valley State University where he edits Valley Voices: A Literary Review. His latest collection of poetry, The Dog Years of Reeducation, was published by Madville Publishing in February 2023.

William R. Ferris is the Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the senior associate director emeritus of its Center for the Study of the American South. The former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (1997-2001), Ferris has written or edited ten books, created fifteen documentary films, and his most recent work Voices of Mississippi won two Grammy Awards for Best Liner Notes and for Best Historical Album in 2019.