Tuesday Evening, Aug. 25th, 2009
At the edge of Madeline Island we walk barefoot
along the northern lakeshore. The water is freezing.
Gulls that had this morning feasted on insects
tide's-edge, left trails of three-toed feet in the sand.
The sun has nearly set; the sky, burning. It's hard
not to think of this day lasting forever. But nothing
ever does. Remnants of castles line the beach,
each unique except for the requisite moat. I feel
as though we've arrived just after the end of the world.
In this case I don't mean the end by force.
That is never an end. I mean the kind of ending
that means "you are free to go now" and the steel
gate lurches open and you resolve, no matter what,
you will always remember that first true breath of air.
Now you will make a new world, resplendent, an exact
model of this one, right down to the old man and woman
holding hands in the canoe, far out in the bay, waiting
for full dark to shock the moon into fullness.
