right arm bent against the ferry’s stout frame. A mile out,
the opposite shore smears in dank expanse, sycamores
dense in the owl-dark of June. In the foreground,
heat radiates from fenders of Chevys parked
in rows of three on the deck. There is a sun so warm
you mistake it for sleep. How easily the photographer’s
gaze opens a hole in me. My great grandfather, collector
of ease, architect of routine, captured
her best in the language of her skepticism. I believe
her thoughts tilt toward the unknowable. Could
it be me, a chance reckoning with the future?
Here she is wholly present, spirited
as a child, pink headscarf tied in the shape
of a bell, so bright it rings. Her frown
deepens to a singular point and I know
what she would say, Is this not enough? She’d be right,
I’ve spent enough time peering through albums
until I see myself staring back as if I didn’t know
my own regrets—memorabilia I don’t recognize,
family that doesn’t know me. Give me the refusal
to adapt as a girl must. I’m where the self
finds another name, two generations away—
but can the heart be so sick with yearning
it cleaves blood-fat clots from its burled arteries?
Suppose I tell her where I am, how leaving
the country meant paying off my debt. I’m still
out here giving what I have to these jarred-in mornings
of stream frogs and dust. Suspended, not unlike
her, above an eventuality clouded and stirred
by current. That I have never come back. What then?
If I tell her it’s loneliness that raised me, will it mean
I can come home through buckeye-sought
roots, through the wild rye and dropseed, spread against
the night like thinning hair? Beneath the silt-heavy
willows, warm music from the eastern shore
warps forward like an under-bite. Already,
I sense myself on the other side, furred with sweat.
The ferry pulls beneath the winding of insects.
Forever, the sputtering of engines rev in the wrong gear.
