Millions of Years Ago 1
My Nico 2
Unfolding a Flood 4
Turning the Key 5
The Memory of Lake Tahoe 16
My Mother's Eyes 17
My Mother 18
Coda 21
By Chance 25
When Bamboo Shoots Poke Their Heads out of the Earth 29
Blue Rambler 30
Tender Buttons 47
Waiting 49
Refusing to be Plucked 55
We Want Roses 56
She Sleeps with Him Every Night 59
She-Wolf Made of Rock 61
Blue Ticket 65
Learning to Swim 66
Floating Studio, Floating Zendo 67
Fannette Island 76
Floating Zendos and Mentorgartens 79
I Learned about Snowflakes 82
I Learned about the Birds of Lake Tahoe 84
Summer Snow Cake 86
Love or Affection 88
Mary's Dream 89
Each Other's Pockets 90
Black Cloth 91
Brown Kimono 94
Something Broke 96
The Voice of the Lake 101
Moon Writing 102
Artichoke 104
No Name for Him 107
What's in a Name? 108
Like Piles of Laundry? 109
Frozen Pond 111
Coda's Dream 113
Like Mother and Son 114
Fifteen Good Prints 115
Glass Moon 117
Tsukimi Udon (Moon Noodles) 118
Soaring 121
Walking Underwater 123
Open My Heart 125
Like Rice on Chopsticks 126
Like a Sequence of Poems 127
Waiting, Still 128
Morpheus 129
Blue Marble 131
Something Like Love 132
Afterword (Afterward): Like the Navel of My Dream of Nico 133
Acknowledgments 139
Illustrations 141
Notes 143

Like a Lake

A Story of Uneasy Love and Photography