Seeing Pickerel Lake

what does water look like? I wondered, as I watched it.
It was brown and silvery and purple and smooth.
But it was more than color, texture, shine.
It could not be drawn with my sharpie.

I looked harder and saw less, until I saw nothing at all.
I stopped searching, my eyes relaxed, my attention shifted
A frog burp in the arroweed, the soft whip of the casted line,
The honk of a billed bird, the plop of a snacking bluegill

Suddenly the surface revealed itself to me.
A reed line and tree line and skyline.
The underworld so real
rustled by wind and by ripples.