Poem: June 22, 2019

Otters

You and I, floating together,
my hand holding onto the edges
of your inner tube and laced
loosely with your fingers, smooth
and in quiet conversation, the kind
of talking with long pauses, but
with no interruptions, just lazy
observations- how blue the sky is,
how cool the water- and the others
are drifting farther away downstream,
splashing and careening through
the rapids, dancing over the rocks,
off in the distance, in another place,
but don't the clouds seem closer,
and doesn't the highway seem to fade
into the periphery like a dream as we
move in our own slow current down
the Little Pigeon River, just holding
on and wishing we could roll along
like otters, holding hands and drifting
through the sunlit afternoon.