Boat

Wind off the small pond where I set my rubber

boat down and climbed in, my child-sized paddle

barely long enough to push off or feather

a rudderless craft. Easier to drift in circles

across the late-March waters, my dogs

wild at the idea of spring’s first cold immersions.

Still, they swam out to try to climb aboard,

swamping my little boat until, soaked through,

I paddled back, spilled roaring in the shallows.

Onshore two mothers watched, and their

young children who neither waved nor smiled,

nor I. Distance forgave us, and the babies,

who stood on guard, sticks in their little

hands raised to the pack shaking dry,

running headlong in their direction.

The mothers swept children onto hips

and turned, barely maneuvering behind them

strollers tipping a wreck of bright bottle bags,

toys, blankets, perhaps extra clothes.

Once they looked back to show me myself at fifty,

frightening to them, not yet recognizable, the self-

same, almost, in an old nightmare obsolete,

who might have called out to reassure

as I buried my freezing legs in the sun-warmed

sand and lay back, flanked by three dogs

and a rubber boat. O brilliant, trivial unmooring.