Red Canoe - Jan 13 2022

 

Red Canoe

Jan 13 2022

We should have beached it higher.

Didn't think the water would rise

as we slept through the night

under the stars.

I've even had a big wind

pick her up and take her;

found her mired in weeds

in a backwater bay

across the lake.

It must have been something

seeing her sailing through the air

out of her element.

And when she tipped, and turtled

out of sight of shore,

and there was nothing to do but swim her back

for hours in the cold.

The misadventures

we've survived together

as well as apart.

Like banjo music

and toddlers eating ice cream,

you can't suppress a smile

when you see a red canoe.

But she has no time

for such frivolity,

pressing ahead

steady and reliably.

The human tendency

to breath life into things,

project our own sensibilities

onto inanimate objects.

So even though I'm not sentimental

and not a magical thinker

I'll miss her when she's gone.

If it isn't me

who departs first.

Right now, she's at her winter rest

by the lake's frozen edge,

hibernating

like a mother bear

above the high watermark.

Where you might not even notice,

bottom up

in white camouflage

beneath a gentle rise of snow.

Safe until spring

impatient for the thaw.