after words

No wonder Whiskeytown Lake drew us in,
holding up, as it does, all the great weight of blue sky,
holding down all those ghosts near the outskirts
where a mining town drowned
once the dam came in.  We hauled our crafts there,
escaped August’s heat, February’s ennui,
lines humming on Summer’s catamaran,
kokanee nibbling bait thrown
from our blue-bottomed skiff in pre-Spring. 
We used the road to the drowned town
for a boat ramp, saw walls standing in the clutter
of blue gill schools once
after a seven-year drought - the water, so low then,
small fortunes could be had mining 
snags for lost lures.
When gnat wings went gold with sun and buzz,
we tied off to wild vines and took the shore grass
to our thighs - yours mine, yours mine -

O how we laughed at the thorns.
O how we laughed at their bite.

With nothing but water, we’d go dizzy and drunk,
shallows lapping us free and making us new
in the womb of a finger cove. 

Uphill from the drowned town there are cattails
and blue-bodied dragonflies, yellow marsh iris, blackberries,
minnows, frogs.  When the burrs of memory snag
and hold, I am water and sky and you
are the honest air of both, allowing me breath. 
The road remains.  Always will.  

.