Bear Lake (To Grandpa Mac)

Alone on this sanded shore, skipping

stones, I breathe the last red of day,

while the windowed eyes of cabins

blink into life.

I think of you six valleys away,

lying in a caged bed, a prisoner

to your own body, measuring your days

in trayed meals.

But if you were here, a bent man

standing tall in his remembered youth,

you would fill this thin July night with

past Bear Lake summers.

Days brimming with oiled harnesses,

sway-backed horses, greening wheat,

and jersey cows jetting warm milk

into cold pails.

Nights at the dance hall—buggies parked

in a row, the blare of saxophones, cow-eyed girls

with their hair up, and farm boys scrubbed

clean of the barn.

And Saturdays at North Beach before it

was a park—sleeping in hot sand, dunking

friends, chasing sea gulls, swimming

without buoyed limits.

If you were only here to tell me these things,

but you are not. So this last stone smooth

as washed wood, smooth as your freckled head,

I lift to you.

I fit it to my fingers and flick it sidearmed—

and it becomes your stone flung from your arm,

scattering water, like pieces of reflected moon,

over your dark lake.