Away
In the late Spring
when I was a child
we would go
canoeing on
the Blue River
with my parents'
friends and
their many kids-
a whole tribe-
on a fourteen mile
trip, from start to
finish, and ending
just before
the swollen river
dropped over
the old concrete
dam where the
canoe rental van
would wait
to take our baked
and soggy bodies
back to the place
where we began,
and I remember
those days as long
diversions, a slow
wandering and
unraveling joke
in which the sun
burned our top
halves and
the water soaked
the rest, and we
would float idly
beside the canoes
between bursts
of rapids and
getting hung up
in the shallows.
We ate our lunches
on the sandbars
at noon, sitting
under the trees or
on the upturned
canoes, and
the breeze would
hold its breath,
leaving us sweating
and ready for
the water ahead,
and in the afternoon,
the odd quiet
of paddles pushing
the water, far away
from the city- a sigh
really, permission
to be both wild
and still.
No comments:
Post a Comment