MARRIAGE LICENSE won the Pavement Saw Press Chapbook Competition in 2007
Summer's Lease
"I rise and fall, and time folds
Into a long moment...."
– Journey to the Interior, Theodore Roethke
As eagles scour winds of morning, cleat-clink
on the flagpole and a cell phone in the lake.
Not a day from the past, one of those
lost idylls with shovel and pail and whited
snail shells as we made sand cookies,
taught careless minnows to do the backstroke.
Still, watch out for the small girl on the dock.
In yellow-green water, you'll lose a dropped
fishing pole and spread-eagled child.
Below the mocking surface, who is she, who was she?
If we dig in the sand until water comes up, will her face,
your face, reflect from that shallow pool?
In Itasca where the mighty Mississippi begins to flow,
In Itasca, which isn't even Chippewa or Ojibway
but a scholar-coined word—
from Latin, no less, veritas caput: the true head.
Caput, the head, your head stores all myths
true or false, the Loch Ness of lies. Here, 2,552 miles
above the Gulf of Mexico, you drop a twig in the river.
A child wades, watches the twig, crosses the log bridge
between yesterday and today. Yesterday, you were
that child. See her, brown fawn of a girl, eager
to slip undetected among the cattails.
Shadow of wolf and coyote imprinted, shadow
of satiny skin time will warp and stretch.
Today you are the shadow in the shadow as
cumulous slowly bandages blue. Today's wind is
cold from the south. Today you told northbound
geese they were wrong-headed,
warned bear and turtle to think about shelter.
North is the way to winter. North, like veritas,
is the white within white.
Last year, your mother's friend died alone in
her cabin. Now her picture, in a boat-shaped
frame, sits on your mother's desk,
mother who, alone, still lives her arc of
a life, as do you, rounded, turning, puzzled,
deer tracks hard to follow in the shade.
Here, all ages are one yet are none.
White-capped surface of the lake is shook foil
in the sun, as the head of an eagle—who preens
on a branch above slapping water—dazzles.
No eagles when you were a girl, no fear of
the never-again. Only fear of what-if and ever.
O, song of the flagpole, sonata of wave and wind.
Out by the sandbar, in the shallows, wild
rice grows. Move toward it, wait, listen.
River or lake: watch twig and wing, take water
and light into your self. The lease is almost up.
Susan Terris
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