And With My Rural Pen I Stained the Water Clear

Children wheel
in their century
on the lakeshore,

grey sky and green
waves
hiding time,

leaving undeclared
the sameness of
their lives
with mine,
and the lives
of the countless
unseen
who have shipwrecked,
portaged, picknicked,
and survived here.

They bring me rocks.

Sticks to whittle into pens.

They rush me;
rush me —

pull me from the
dying steeltowns

to explain
The way sky and
water
pour themselves
one into the other
and make an unknown thing;

The way waves
push silence
across the table
to the world.

All these things
I once made uneasy peace with;
these things I long ago agreed
with God's silence
would never be explained.

My knife shapes the tips of drift-twig pens
while my voice wanders
from the shore
far into the lake,
and the boys no longer listen.

We will leave those pens behind —
half-carved, uninked —
when it's time to pack up and go.

I've left so many unfinished,
unanswered and unanswering,
strewn across the miles.