These are days of sunlight after rain, days when the lake water returns me to something like my old self. (The self I have become accustomed to over the past year feels so reduced…) Last night–a late swim because the parking lot at the little beach area was completely full when we went down after lunch so we couldn’t even park, let alone swim — anyway, last night I was out in deep water watching two loons about twenty feet away, one warbling a little, then the other, I was treading water, watching them, the sun moving further along the western horizon, when John said, Do you see the geese? And yes, I saw them, a parent at either end of a long moving line of goslings, crossing the lake now that the boats had all gone quiet. The geese crossing, the loons making a low tentative sound, the water green around me, crows alighting on the sand in search of scraps now that all the picnics had been packed away, a raven in the cedars saying a word insistently over and over, so that John said it back, the conversation continuing until we’d returned to our car, a little sand clinging to my feet.
...Theresa Kishkan 