by David Adams

My kayak glides into December

like a bright red blade in a landscape

faded grey and brown and green beneath

a sky that hovers like a single cloud

as edged and delicate as mica.

 

Yesterday I watched my mother slap

her palm against her heart and fix her eyes

hard into her mother’s century—

shawls billowing chenille and silk,

a row of glads lake acolytes

leaning from a breeze that cannot end.

 

Hoe strangely might the World insist…

There was a chord with someone’s name.

There was a vase that spilled its prayers;

they rolled like candles. They were stars.

 

A string of gleaming decoys spin and bob

unnaturally in the freshening wind.

All brands of hope float here in ways

so small you’d think that living any life

at all was just a matter of addition.

But the mergansers are not fooled

and cluster near the dam far out of range.

I can hear the whispered curses in the reeds,

and I remember that the reedy hours that wave

and ring us all our lives hold every

whisper ever heard or lost or dreamed….

In the middle of this water I just stop

 

and feel the drift to stillness nearly perfect

but for me, balanced on an edge so fragile

between acceptance and tomorrow

as the wind and waves ripple into agitation.

It can be too late for wonder.

Still, to feel blessed just now…who knows?

 

The paddle dips and pulls,

a breath of water tracing the parabola

towards the longer lights of winter,

towards home, wherever that is.