The lake was big enough to have islands,
a sign of wealth . . . my islands . . .
We saw a campsite on the largest
as we paddled by. No one there yet.
It was no particular day.
It was just day.
Once you could get far enough away,
but now you carry money with you even here.
The portage smelled like dust
and fish guts — a little altar on a stone,
a pile of viscera and heads, shining with prompt flies:
someone cleaned a few small walleyes.
Don’t be sorry — they felt nothing.
Nothing you would recognize anyway,
though you’ve jabbed your fingers on lures,
and you’ve swum naked in a lake
without your glasses,
and your breathing has been labored,
your eyes stung by the sun.
At your most vulnerable moment
something rose in the periphery,
dangerous and indistinct, a rough underwater boulder
big enough to dump a canoe into the whitecaps
before you could even think a warning.
Save what you can, quickly —
but that gets harder and harder.
The lakes are low, drought and record heat,
southern summers creeping north
trailing their poisonous snakes
into Minnesota, a no-fault state
where we blame everyone, or no one.
without even seeing it.
My lure, suddenly free, leapt back at me.
I knew the fish was big
by the quality of its panic,
the line it drew against the drag.
I hated to lose it — I swore like a man.
One moment I looked into the lake
and it seemed full; the next moment, empty.
We smelled bear on the portage
but saw only an early star
burning through the jack pines — Ursa Absentia.
Not a star, but a planet with an accusatory stare.
We had the sun in common and little else.
Ours was the Goldilocks orbit,
not too hot, not too cold.
A day on the water
and all we could think of was sleep,
sleep and the lost fish.
We take things; we leave things behind —
and the sum of all this is zero,
or rather, one more day.