Percy Priest Lake one July afternoon,
me in my bright orange life vest
and round, wide face, wearing a two-piece,
red with beige stripes.
The two of you sit in the motorboat and sip
canned beer out of an ice chest
so cold the aluminum drips.
Into the long, green, odorous wake
of the water, lukewarm and thick
with its summer spawning, its reek of live fish,
I drop my body, sleek and plump as a seal’s.
The lake sheathes my skin, slips over and coats
my hair ends. Up close, the water’s brown.
On the boat you sip your beer again
and laugh. I revise it now, a scene so crisp
nobody but myself has witnessed it
who’s still alive: the clean, white motorboat,
the two of you leaning at ease, lightly dressed,
you laughing, tossing your lipsticked smile back,
your hair freshly set. It’s the mid-1970s.
I’m a spark on this memory’s surface,
its riveted warp; a watery sack of bone
and flesh, a red speck. I am six or seven.
After I swim, we will eat sardines
on crackers smeared with yellow mustard
so bright it seems leaked from the sun.
The two of you look happy in this light
I have captured. Now, you are looking at me.
I’m swimming—see? I’m close to the boat
where you are, but free to swing my vision
to the forested banks behind my head
that hold pockets of darkness, an infinite shimmer
of leaves. The Tennessee sunlight hammers
several feet of the lake to a warm, womb-like silt
that makes me sleepy. I should swim back.
But this day will last hours—we all can feel it.
It holds us in the palm of a leisure
so timeless it might still be here.
I am floating separate, but know your figures
are behind me, in the hold of what’s stopped.
You laugh and talk. I could meet your eyes
from my point in near-distance. The boat gently rocks.