Mornings on the lake
I woke in dawn’s green
glove, air soft with water,
narrow bed still warm,
she’d sit, light as a coverlet
on the mattress, tell me
of a lonely bird
who circled the lake’s blue
stripe, looking down on
its shale beaches and
frosted wavelets, the
halo of beech trees
that stood around it
like a circle in prayer
saying to all the boys climbing
from sleep’s cove:
Come greet the world anew.
Forty years later, along a fjord
clouded by sea smoke, the white
bird glides by again, the air soft
now with water,
the hills greened by mist,
this narrow bed still warm with sleep,
and I, I imagine its eye peering down,
all the way down to the boys
who are no longer boys,
saying Begin, begin again.