Still Waters

Coming To This Place Once Again.

And coming to this place once again,
the old house is both familiar and strange.
The slatted wooden door broken from its hinges,
the shutters, creaking, stiff, like my old man’s knees.
Then the water, stretching out like some supplicant
to the sky and the caw caw of the water loons,
familiar, insistent, but like the call of death – my death.

The tall forest trees reach down to the water’s edge
as though to drink their fill; once a source of insatiable
delight, unending, now foreboding and unfamiliar,
a place to lose one’s soul; and for these towering pines
there are no seasons, come winter ice or summer heat,
they endure, erect, clothed in evergreen.

As I look out across the water,
I see with clarity... the forms.
I see the undulating clouds
crisscrossing the infinite blue,
and the tiny pinpricks of light
hitting the surface like shards
from some jewel encrusted crown.

Yet do I see, yet can make no connection
to the days gone by, the past like a shroud –
my shroud – my death knell – my life.

But there are momentary pauses
in the blanketing numbness,
the fishing trips, a companion, a boy not yet grown.
Yes, moments when I forget who I once was,
or even what I have now become;
and then this woman, my lifelong companion,
my rock to cling onto, to hold.
But then this other one, so like that one I love,
yet not the same. Who is she?
My daughter, yes, the daughter I have never really known.
Why is it I cannot say the words that she has
always yearned to hear?
Why are those words so very difficult to say, or to hear?

As she looks at me, then smiles, the fog clears
and I say those words, ‘I love you,’
and the world I see with clarity again,
My world…
My family…
My place…
My home.