Ekalaka Lake!
aka: Lake Ekalaka
(/Ekalaka Lake)!
Indeed, we recall having visited the town (and its nearby, also-otherworldly hot spot, Medicine Rocks) many years before the poem ever came to us, though we are sure we didn't think then to look out for a lake and of course can't now recall having seen one. (Still, we'll be sure to go back there for a new look, and a listen, as soon as possible.) At all events, the 1979 USGS map of the Ekalaka Quadrangle does show at least a sizeable reservoir or catch basin partly within Ekalaka's town limits (itself a perfect mile square and square mile), and though the map does not specifically give a name for this, Ekalaka's only body of water and the biggest for miles around, the map still does very suggestively position the Ekalaka name so right up against the lake and so far from downtown Ekalaka as to almost audibly ask: "Let's get this perfectly square: Is Ekalaka the town or the lake, or both, and is the lake EKALAKA LAKE or Lake Ekalaka, or both?" Having said this, and feeling very pleased with ourselves for it, we could not resist telephoning the town of Ekalaka to ask what the people there 'actually' call this body of water, and perhaps recite our palindromic good news to them, and at the post office we were summarily enlightened: "Oh, 'that'! That's the sewage lagoon!" At which we could but marvel, "Eek, a lack o' lake!" But, fortunately, we couldn't bear to let the matter rest in such a condition, and we felt compelled to revisit Ekalaka and to verify firsthand the lake's actual disposition. What a relief to learn that the postlady was wrong or just goofing on us! For big as day, just behind the rodeo grounds and at least a quarter of a mile above the sewage lagoon, there shone the lake, a large man-made catchment basin watering numerous cattle and wild ducks. The lady who runs the Wagon Wheel Cafe downtown said this lake has never had a name and also said she had never heard of any EKALAKA LAKE or Lake Ekalaka anywhere, and allowed as she had never realized the reversibility of the name EKALAKA LAKE, whatever it may or may not mean. We of course were ecstatic to be able to officially name this body of water on the spot to suit ourselves, that is, by both the short form and the full three-line texts given above. (How often does one find some place that still needs a name nowadays 'and' just happen to have not just one but a whole bouquet of perfect names available?) And we trust that in time other people, too, will begin to love and refer to this perfectly unique body of water as we do.
From I LOVE ME, VOL. I : S. WORDROW'S Palindrome Encyclopedia revealed and interpreted by Michael Donner (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1996, 424 page paperback, at bookstores).