A Few More Days

This is their world: seagull in heightened flight, heron low skimming, geese flocked up close among lilies, loons in tremolo warning, snakes curled long absorbing heat.   Among them now, barefoot and listening to Beethoven, first thing Sunday morning, and suddenly, all I want, is to be part of their world.   Music off, breeze picking up, the lake is stirring now.   There it is: their world, and me, thinking, and trying too hard, to find a way in.   In a few days.   In a few days, limbs and breath, in tranquil stretching, loose and deep, will be floating effortlessly, in our world.

The Story, Rewritten

Out beyond the sunken shallows,

a saltwater bay,

almost still,

save for one loon.

 

This loon,

alone,

and I sink down,

interpretation low and sad.

 

I imagine it lost,

abandoned,

its mate long gone:

that storm,

those lights,

that boat.

 

But if I bend it back,

change the story

I can see it content,

after a morning bath,

she’s clean and alert,

a webbed foot thrust out behind,

as it floats,

giving in to the currents,

it knows deep

in the silence of its bones.

 

A small boat approaches from the north,

and then I hear it:

a quick trilling tremolo of warning.

 

There’s another loon,

beyond the buoys,

swimming in.

 

I am hushed,

and humbly whisper,

“I’m sorry.”

 

I leave them to what they know:

water,

inside and out,

fresh and salty.

 

Alone and together.

 

The story,

rewritten.