All year long my skin whitened under the burn of going without. -No travel in the most beautiful and aesthetic vehicle I know -no slap of wave against it’s hull -no satin surface to carve with the wood of paddle -no taste of that freedom only a river or lake affords -only obligations and responsibilities ate at any true sense of that freedom
until i went alone
the big boisterous sky ahead
under a hot mid-October sun
on a rocky outcropping
in a Thermarest with
a beer
and a smoke
above the lip of Lake Umbagog
my skin ripening
my legs crossed
the wave against rock
discussing their fears
of the weakening economy
the ignited hills above
gesturing towards the south
its orange airline traffic lights waving
the lone kayak passing by
complimenting the earth on her choice of weather
the tandem canoe in the distance clearly loafing in the sun
the bow adrift in no direction
the sequence skirt of the lake’s surface
showing off her goods
and my eyes when closed
were starry against the bright red
of that smoldering day
“Time is an enormous, long river, and I’m standing in it, just as you’re standing in it. My elders are the tributaries, and everything they thought and every struggle they went through and everything they gave their lives to, and every song they created, and every poem that they laid down flows down to me – and if I take the time to ask, and if I take the time to see, and if I take the time to reach out, I can build that bridge between my world and theirs. I can reach down into that river and take out what I need to get through this world”
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