There are words that do the poetry, they are endless, you can get the lawn the way it was light and dark, always moving, almost breathing, those big maple trees leaves big as flags, all the pines way out back leaning into Roman numerals you couldn’t help but be taken. I don’t know how anybody can grow up in a place like that and not write, I think it was a way to quell the restless devouring energy – and I didn’t even mention the lake yet – you couldn’t see it most of the time all those trees and distance, but you could feel it, there was a shimmer in the light if you knew what to look for.
It slowed down in the winter, but still, the bones.
Lake Superior, cold and dangerous, shoulders and elbows of ships that had gone down, and throats upon which gulls lighted. It was not a place for play, my parents said, and this I felt, I understood, for when I approached its long shores, I became sombre and walked in a way beyond my years. I picture myself now. hands clasped behind my back. I pulled forward with an old man’s grace, cognizant of tragedy, buried in it. somehow shameful.
I worried about the ships on the horizon. and a few times I saw eyelash kayaks and shook my head at the foolhardy, but I’d never seen anyone swimming until I saw Mr. Norton, he was our school librarian, I saw first the lump of his folded clothing, a leather belt, and a rolled blue towel, deep enormously spaced footprints in the sand as if he ran in.
He was a dot. but I knew it was him. and for a moment I thought suicide. everyone knew his wife had left him and there were stories of him unable to function at work. he betrayed the dewey decimal system he revered, the books unshelved, haphazard, his trembling glasses.
He spotted me almost immediately and I guess he knew who I was, or maybe he didn’t, but he waved just a small one. so as not to be misconstrued I supposed, I waved back, a wallop of a wave I was so relieved he was not drowning himself.
I composed myself quickly and walked on, my hands clasped at my back, my carving nose, but he hollered Sam! Wait! so I turned and I waited.
I didn’t know about recovery. I didn’t know about change. I didn’t know about fearlessness most of all.
The next bit is carbonized, the words I mean, I carry them with me everywhere I go. such unlikely poetry tucked under my chin when I swim.
His wet words when I said you swam? an incredulous accusation to which he said fuck yeah dude and he showed me it was the first time I’d seen that kind of joy I didn’t know was possible.
