On Patten Pond

It’s an overcast, lazy kind of kayaking day,

and as I float past boulders                                                   

and watch the water of Patten Pond
eddy around me, my mind drifts

to last night and the photos in your album,

all taken when I was not even a distant blip

on your horizon. In one, you crouch,

your youngest daughter asleep

in your backpack, your body taut

beneath a t-shirt, a shy smile on your face.

In another, all three daughters

in nighties before a Christmas tree,

a mixture of awkwardness and eagerness

on their young faces.

I flip though your album searching

each photograph for clues

to the family you had before mine.

The mother who cradled you,

the brother, beside you, his chubby hand

dipped into the box of Cheerios you hold,

the daughters, now mothers who carry

the imprint of your fathering,

the infant son you held for minutes

then spent years imagining                                                                               

in someone else’s home—

So much life going on day after day

in another state, another town, another house

as I bore children, careened

through the disintegration of a marriage,

bumped along through therapy

and false starts of relationships,

then a roller coaster wait

for you to lose fear, find hope,

and finally join me

in a path now littered with

your brother/my siblings,

your parents/my parents,

your children/my children.

Who’d have thought pronouns could wound so deeply?

From my kayak I peer into the tangle of water lily stems

and try to decipher where a single Nymphae odorata begins

and another ends. It’s hopeless, so I push off, drift past

turtles adoze on logs beneath a sky that matches

the feathers of the Great Blue, past

loon parents feeding grasses to an offspring, past

beaches littered with the remains of family outings.

I sit, oar resting across my kayak, and imagine

all of this activity extending in a blaze of unity

day after day. No sign of before and after or his and hers.

After a final glance from shore to shore

I dip my oar into the black waters

of Patten Pond and head for home.