List of 4 items.

• Fishing with My Father

  Lake Champlain was still

  and silent beneath the steel

  gray sky that lonely summer

  before high school, my hard pivot

  for better clothes, longer hair

  and girls, things that mattered more

  than a spontaneous trip

  through my father’s heart.

  It was his idea to cruise north

  in his blue Volkswagen Rabbit

  to where his father and his

  father’s father afforded

  their own father-son memories,

  but after half an hour I realized

  my father didn’t know how to fish.

  As we sat at opposite ends

  of the rented aluminum dinghy

  the wind picked up. The low clouds

  cracked then cried. Flat-topped

  and aloof, I ate my ham sandwich,

  watched the black water

  and yes, my father, start to boil.

  He reeled it all in—the war

  replaying in his head, the work

  away from family, his offer

  of future camping trips—

  until he held his limp lunker line

  that swung like a pendulum

  in front of him, hypnotizing him

  against his febrile dreams

  while I just stared at the pale

  worm on the end, impaled

  and twisted into a question mark.

  Back at the site we buried

  the rest near a short hemlock tree.

  We didn’t speak much. Nothing

  about high school. It was okay.

  We had already cooled the embers

  of our small leftover fire

  with dirty rainwater, crawled

  into his brother’s old tarpaulin tent

  for two, understood why

  we were there, the dutiful father,

  the dutiful son, going along

  living in gestures, drifting off

  to sleep to the amplified sounds

  of the darkening forest, humming

  in out heads the briefest

  most beautiful song.

• Learning to Swim

  My son dog paddles over the scratchy string

  of blue and white buoys and into the murk

  of the deep end, oblivious to oblivion,

  water overwhelming water, the lesser body losing.

  He jerks across the surface, his skinny limbs

  raking the darker depths, stirring the cold

  hardness of becoming.

   

  He looks the way most adults feel:

  all strain and struggle, desperate

  to stay afloat. Myself, I’m teetering on a sliver

  of vinyl liner in a 1984 T-shirt, forever watching,

  begging him with every inch he gains to stay

  just as he is: a boy, a ballplayer, an aspiring author.

   

  Nights, I’ve been finding him in our bed,

  so I carry his long body, heavy with the weight

  of new worry, back to his small blue room

  where he still dreams high flying

  comic book dreams, but they’re waning dreams

  I know will someday disappear.

   

  Afternoon shadows spill across the uneven pavers.

  He’s spitting now. Smiling. I think he’s got it,

  the notion that progress takes work.

  His hand slaps the ladder’s rung, and somewhere

  young sparrows pull and sweep from their nest.

   

  Sparks of water fly from his trunks as he shuffles

  for the shallow end, returning to where he started,

  the safe, clean neighborhood of childhood.

  When his face flashes with kindness

  I feel like a fugitive with a stricken heart, knowing

  this will happen again when he’s older,

  this latest test of his will. This test of mine.

• Why

  I don’t know why

  I’m into gardening,

  but I do feel the forest

  watching me,

  I do imagine

  its myriad living things

  around me, cheering,

  clapping their paws

  or wings with each churn

  of the earth, I do

  itch to keep checking

  a single seed’s march

  as if my own, to keep

  willing it to sprout

  out of the dark

  like the birth of a star.

• Wild

  We emerge

  from the pause

  of days

  in muted wonder,

  start passing

  an hour

  in purposeless

  wandering

  around the local

  farm. You sprint

  along the line

  of early

  chokecherry trees,

  the new sun

  strong, the old

  trail fresh. Laugh

  like birds

  that want to

  be noticed.

  And it’s easy

  to notice you

  because we’re

  finally out

  of the house.

  Forgive me.

  You have my gaze

  now. Go, burst

  forth across

  this afternoon.

  Eat what you can

  of the wide,

  true sky.

  And if I speak,

  don’t listen.