Photo by Derek Sutton on Unsplash
Lake Ontario
To Dad
You are launching us in the boat
that you made seaworthy. It scrapes against the
pebbles which shift so reassuringly when the lake
is calm. It is your boat, your day, and we are your
children. We have brought along our families,
all that we have added to your empire. We wear
the sun on our cheeks and our hair is wild
from the wind and the swimming.
The waves are gentle. We giggle – teenagers again—
laughing at the squabbling gulls, the resiliency
of the oars you have had to retrieve so often,
the desire to take yet another picture of
the sunset, the anticipation of the campfire songs
we will sing which once made us believe
you grew up among cowboys. Although we are all
strong swimmers, we are wearing our orange
lifejackets because you have always insisted.
We are like petals of the sunset, stemming from the
dark, lost histories below, balanced precariously
on the boat as it rocks in the shimmering water. We
are your children, too confident to notice the rays
filling the boat and setting it alight, piercing holes
in the bottom, illuminating the sunken treasures and
lost cities far below, and you, on the shore, waving.
This town with one bridge
This town with one bridge
leans away from the lights reflected off the river,
celestial certainties of life
on the other side. Its plywood store-front windows,
scuffed construction cones,
boxed apartment buildings, Victorian turrets
blackened with mildew
give into the slope. A man sways down main street
at midnight, smokes down his cigarette
until it burns his lips, curses, and flicks it away.
Every Sunday a retired schoolteacher
carrying her black bag, stabbing at litter, walks alone
alongside the single railroad track
that careens along the river, the trains announcing
themselves from the east,
yet every decade someone won’t hear it coming.
Early mornings are so still
that I won’t see a person fishing from the rocks
until a fish on the hook
breaks the water. Kids on bikes use the flag
raised high every morning
in front of the town hall as a landmark
when they give directions to a passer-by.
They ride up and down cracked sidewalks
in a town banked against the river.
A Proctor at the Final Exam
A proctor at the final exam,
I notice the fidgeters—the pen
suckers, necklace twirlers, earlobe
kneaders, knuckle squeezers, thigh
bouncers, cuticle chewers, and
lip pullers—trying to muster
the requisite concentration
for the poetry passage. One
makes her pen dance like the tail of
a happy puppy while she gazes
down the aisle, as though in the
carpet stains will appear “simile,”
defined. Another wrinkles his nose
like a suspicious bunny. They
wait for me to release them from
their tics by calling “time.” I watch
the clock, recalling years ago,
my mother’s frown during Mass as
I played with my coat zipper. (“Why
can’t you stop fiddling?” she sighed.
“But I’m not,” I replied, “This is
a trombone!”): my mother, who tapped
her foot when the nurse adjusted
the IV, rolled rosary beads
between her fingers as the priest
prayed and fluttered her eyelids when I
bent to kiss her. I think of her
while the bank clerk, waiting for
the screen to change, drums red
lacquered fingernails along the
keyboard, and later, as the old
man walks up and down the street at
night, even though it has been months
since his dog was lost. The next day
when the graders gather, they shuffle
their papers, counting how many are
left to read: a woman draws her
shoulder to her ear as if to
muffle the effects of poor diction,
another massages her forehead,
a man rubs his brushcut, impatient
for better luck, and in the back
of the room, tallying scores, sits
a tired teacher, nodding, nodding.