…the trail to the lake for my swim, I was humming, not Kris Kristofferson’s iconic song, but the dreamier Carrickfergus,
My childhood friends and my relations
have all passed on now like the melting snow
so I’ll spend my days in endless roving
soft is the grass, my bed is free
oh to be back now in Carrickfergus
on that long road down by the sea
And no, my relations have not all passed on (Hello, brothers! A few cousins! Children and families!) but it was the light that had that long melancholy feeling to it. Dark hills, small islands shining, sky uncertain. I was never in Carrickfergus, though I love the song. And the road we took to the lake was not long but winding, passing trees heavy with last night’s rain. Henry says he knows every turn in the road and as we drove, he described them with a mapmaker’s detail.
The deer have been bringing their fawns. Twice last week, and once this morning. Cristen said they watched a doe with her young nibbling on hawkbit and dandelions by their bedroom window just before they came out for coffee at 7. A single deer has been around too, sticking his (because I think it’s a young buck) head through the greenhouse door to eat the leaves from a tomato plant and then finding a way to push through the netting protecting some other tomato plants in the boxes where we once we grew cucumbers. On a Sunday morning, coming down the stairs from the upper deck, I can smell the deer, their bodies damp with rain.
Sunday morning, coming down the stairs from my bedroom, I could hear children in the kitchen, asking the questions: What are we doing today, What’s for dinner tonight, Does anyone want to play horsehoes, Can we do archery. Not sure yet, Mexican food, No, and Maybe.
Yesterday there was origami, courtesy of visiting friends, and today a hike is planned to Skookumchuck Narrows, though I’ll stay home to catch up on laundry. This morning, a review in yesterday’s Winnipeg Free Press found its way to me.
Sunday morning, coming down to the water’s edge, I could see that the eagle was perched in an different tree, on the smaller island, and a swallow was taking its breakfast from the air, and a dead moth floated on the green surface.
I would swim over the deepest ocean
the deepest ocean
for my love to find
Mine knows where to find me these Sunday mornings, swimming laps under sun, in rain, under a cloud shaped exactly like a spawning sockeye salmon.
