“See, they return” (Ezra Pound)

See, they return; ah, see the tentative
Movements, and the slow feet

This morning, deer prints in the sand right at the edge of the water. When I walked into the lake for my swim, I kept company with the almost-seen–deer, a raccoon, a kingfisher rattling in a tall cedar but hidden. As I swam, I kept an eye out. I kept an eye out for mergansers, loons, the rise of the plane from the posh house right at the end of the lake.

Right at the end of the lake, an island. And along the shore, an ecological reserve where we walked once and left our dog’s leash, Lily’s leash, fastened to a tree where we’d tied her when we borrowed Billy Griffith’s rowboat, kept for sampling projects–aquatic insects, mosses, bog plants–, to float out onto Ambrose Lake, wild pink rhododendrons in bloom.

See, they return…

At this time in my life, I have so many regrets. That I wasn’t attentive enough, that I didn’t keep in touch. Where do the dead go? I think of Billy, that good man, dropping off a slab of home-smoked salmon, fish caught on his boat, the Tzoonie River, and Lily, the best dog ever, waiting for the children to return home on the school bus. The first bus driver we got to know, Chick Page, the one who welcomed Forrest onto the console at the front of the bus for his ride to kindergarten: long gone.

Gods of the wingéd shoe!
With them the silver hounds
          sniffing the trace of air!

I could list them, the others. But this morning, still damp from my swim, I am thinking of the deer pausing by the lake to drink, a raccoon hunting for crayfish, the kingfisher watching the surface of the water for ripples, and the drowned moth, its floating wings light as a wish.

Haie! Haie!
     These were the swift to harry;
These were the keen-scented;
These were the souls of blood.

Note: the lines of poetry are Ezra Pound’s, from “The Return”