Island Lake

•

The dirt road ends in blackberry thicket
an outcrop of stone—highrock
the Cayuga called it.

Through the evergreen, the silver maple,
the birch, six lakes like drops of blue mist,
each one a mirror.

*

We stared at the planes
through the stereo viewer
until we were blind with silver,
my brother straddling
the rail, his face
pushed up against my own.
A wall to the roar of engines,
a small hole in the future.
And how many more years to know
the thrust, the liftoff?

There is a platform
crowded with faces, a window
opening like the shutter of a camera.
And the fields become one glimpse
among many.

*

My uncle cracks his knuckles
and stares at his hands—piecework,
he says, shaking his head.
Laid-off from Fisher Body in Flint,
he's come east to package shoes.

His days off he'd climb out of the valley
hunting for mushrooms in the hedgerows.
He showed me how to cross the open places,
to ease down the creek bank to find the ones
that were good to eat.
Later, we washed them in the well sink,
the white caps bobbing in the tub,
his hands pushing their tiny heads under.

*

TJ smiles and says the Legion boys
are buying.
All through the afternoon we worked,
setting the forms for the feed mill.
At night we'd drink in the small-town bars,
shooting eight ball until it was too late
to do anything but sleep.
The five a.m. wake-ups, the foreman yelling:
let's go, let's pour it out.
A dream of Friday nights, of dollars
slid across copper-topped counters.

*

Far below a boat casts off,
its ripples widening.
My grandfather leans forward
his forehead wrinkles,
his thick fingers slip the hook
into the water beetle
as he lets the line spin out—
blue nylon circles arc
above the water.
And drawing close
he whispers: watch,
watch how they rise to it.

*

My brother calls from the backyard—
the shadows of a church, of a time
I said I was sorry and meant it.
He calls, but now I cannot hear him,
and we are running side by side
as if to outrun memory itself.
As if we could outdistance
the smokestacks, the vacant lots
the VA homes,
and in some hollow on the cliffs,
share the afternoon,
the blur of traffic from the world below
calling us both away.