POEMS OF SUMMER

It was you, Rick, who showed me, years ago, how you could bend backwards from the raft we framed on empty oil barrels, tacked old carpet onto, on St. Mary's Lake, how you could dive neatly backwards, if you didn't chicken and pull up your head (if you did that you'd smack the water on your back), but, toes on the edge, arms, hands, fingers held out to the horizon for balance, arch back, curl and cleanly slice the black-green lake. And more, and this is what I showed you, follow through with the backwards arc until you returned to the surface - but this way: carefuly, come up under the raft between the barrels where the light glowed a pale dancing green, and our laughter would echo in the steel chambers, and then as we were still, only our breathing and little slaps of waves.