This weekend, my aunt and cousins and extended family will celebrate
the memory of my beloved Uncle Joe.
And they’ll do it by swimming the length of our lake, in Wisconsin.
Because that’s what he used to do, summer mornings.
He’d swim from his cottage to my grandparents’, at the other end of lake.
And there he’d have breakfast with them.
The swim has become tradition these last few years since he’s been gone.
I ache to be there in the water, but instead I’m hear thinking about it and thinking about him.
The Swim
— remembering Joe
In the early morning
a slap of fish
on the surface
of the lake
and our uncle
his clean dive
and breathy reach
less a slap than a slip
unhurried and quiet
into another day
while we sleep
most of us
screened-in
and mindless
that these moments
with duck and carp
and the sun rising
like a warm nest
and the lake
waiting for first flight
that these moments
are ones that we’d long for
until we swim
ourselves
the whole lake
end-to-end
that broad reach
of water
one morning broken
by a hundred hands
or so
each stroke
away from shore
a little easier
E.G.S., 2007
This is so lovely, Liz — and a wonderful family tradition for remembering Uncle Joe.
The lake
The across the lake swim for a kid seems so unfathomable. All that way??? Without a boat or a board to rest on?
And then, there comes the day, when the challenge is heard from one’s own head or from a nearby cousin – and they’re off! Swimming in the ghost strokes of all the kin before.
Beautiful Liz. I feel it!
Bernadette
Oh, Liz. That’s a beautiful tribute. Hugs to you.
Simply beautiful, Liz. What a wonderful way to remember Uncle Joe, both the swimming and your poem.
Tanita Says 🙂
Oh, this is so beautiful. And the unborn sensation of being underwater, the effortless sense of possibility that comes from having no place where your body ends and the body in which it is absorbed — no line between the two, but the ability to move and rest and hang suspended in time and place — that is a tribute to life itself, as well as a tribute to the life of a man who lived it well. Lovely.
PoetryForChildren
Such a beautiful moment. And what a perfect tribute. Thanks for sharing– and for joining the Poetry Friday gathering. Always lovely to connect!
Sylvia