“Bear Lake (To Grandpa Mac)” New Era, July 1991, 51
Bear Lake (To Grandpa Mac)
Alone on this sanded shore, skipping
stones, I breathe the last red of day,
while the windowed eyes of cabins
blink into life.
I think of you six valleys away,
lying in a caged bed, a prisoner
to your own body, measuring your days
in trayed meals.
But if you were here, a bent man
standing tall in his remembered youth,
you would fill this thin July night with
past Bear Lake summers.
Days brimming with oiled harnesses,
sway-backed horses, greening wheat,
and jersey cows jetting warm milk
into cold pails.
Nights at the dance hall—buggies parked
in a row, the blare of saxophones, cow-eyed girls
with their hair up, and farm boys scrubbed
clean of the barn.
And Saturdays at North Beach before it
was a park—sleeping in hot sand, dunking
friends, chasing sea gulls, swimming
without buoyed limits.
If you were only here to tell me these things,
but you are not. So this last stone smooth
as washed wood, smooth as your freckled head,
I lift to you.
I fit it to my fingers and flick it sidearmed—
and it becomes your stone flung from your arm,
scattering water, like pieces of reflected moon,
over your dark lake.