Common House Magazine

A boy plays in the shallows of the lake while his mother

reads on the grass. A workman empties the overfilled

trash cans, and another walks between picnic tables,

bending to cellophane wrapper, coke can, wadded paper bag.

Through the oak trees and scrubby pines, the lake shimmers

under a faint sun. It’s too early for jet skis and motorboats.

Only fishermen weave the water, sink their lines beyond

the no-wake buoys and wait for the pull. Last night,

I talked with your husband. He spoke the words you said I

should prepare for. Be ready, you had said. But, I’m not ready.

I walk the smooth sand to the lapping water edge, test

the cold with my toes, then swim. Slipping between the panels

of water and sky, I am the stroke of hands, the rhythm of breath

framed in mood and memory. The shoreline of Bear Island is small

in the distance; Raccoon Island, smaller still, and between them,

a shaft of deep current and darkness, even as morning expands

the wavering light. I’ve been here before, many times tilting

the shadowed minutes with doubt. I cradle moments inside

themselves. Rising out of the silt-clouded lake, I hold the sun

to its world of pensive wonder, the thin clouds to their curtain

of haze. The boy still plays, and the water swirls around his

spinning body, his small waves swallowed by the shore.

Except for the splash of hands, he is silent in his joy. His mother

lifts her eyes to the men still carting the load of what others

left behind, making clean a beach that will soon be filled again.

I speak your name, a holy word. I want the world to remember

you were here.