One Step After the Next

I step into the water, careful not to slide on moss covered rocks

Round and awkward 

Those sticking out understand my cautious feet

Slow moving, I break the still surface of the lake, causing ripples 
as I move away from the communal edge with

Picnic tables filled with wobbly legged bicyclists, click clacking in their special shoes

On tour, having their rosemary focaccia and free range something...

local ginger ale

The sky that meets the water with dragon flies that hover and hum

on this picture perfect day

I prepare, like always, to swim out to the middle 
But it's been three nights of cold
I  breathe with each stroke through the chill that rises to my chin
as I get farther from shore

My heart 

shouts louder every time I drop below the surface

I cannot breathe evenly
and I realize that my right leg no longer works

and there is no one

swimming or paddling to call out to
I move onto to my back 

and I wonder about my mother's ashes floating freely.

And I know for sure

that I will find my way home,

first on the water

and next on the dusty road.

Unfinished Days

In These Unfinished Days

I often come home weary after a

twenty five minute drive with no sound

Or too much if I crank the radio and scream with the words that crackle and cry from the dashboard,

and my cheap speakers that

throb and shudder when I press the button to raise the window in my old and tired Volvo 240

No words left after a day of endless chatter

with few solutions to problems that mount and level

spill over into my sleep and dreams where I square off 

with demons and angels, reminding me of

conversations with my mother that I never finished,
even though I can't remember what they were about
 I can always feel the texture of her skin, taut and smooth,

and the fabrics that covered her in her final days

That ridiculous giraffe patterned fleece, the only thing we could find that would wrap around her

Blue knit cap made by the Ladies of Mercy

between gossip and gum cracking 

Emergency room visits that lent urgency

to every single day

God help us

there is still so much to do

That has little to do with 

suffering and righteous

just keeping an eye on a horizon that keeps changing

and light

Gorgeous light

That shows us how many shades of green there are. 

Swimming with Norma.

Cloudless September day and a sky
that runs on like an ellipses...
Existing before a memory,
of the open palm of the hand.
                  We'd been here before,
                        before we were here.

Sharing this water in some
             baptismal rite; a concentric buoyancy
                                                that sustains,
bonding us to our
former life.

And here we are together, again
   finding warmth in pockets,
      even after a cold Vermont night.
Certainly, this means
      we all go home
                                               in the end.