Beside Behind Water and Fire
In the hot A-Ga-Ming night
My wife and I skip the July 4th fireworks
At the sandbar down south on long Torch Lake
Start our own shoreline fire
Count the red electrified dorsal fins
Of the motorboat salmon swimming upstream
Migrating home from the explosions in the sky
20, 50, 80 a hundred 200 in an hour
Rainbow tsunami
Our dock leans rickety to the covenant
Lake soothes its wrinkles when the madness is over
Our souls sit back in decrescendo
Take a deep breath
To the cows mooing
Pastures away on Cairn Highway
Like foghorns from the lighthouse perched on the moon
While picking machines convulse in the cherry orchards
Tree by tree to trampolines
Whining mosquitoes if our ears were the hills
Moon slips behind the blueberry clouds
Campfire snaps its fingers for attention
A cricket chirps just outside our circle of radiant rocks
I planted decades ago
Every year he’s here too
Chirping
Chirping
To the embers of the universe
Until he isn’t.
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