Now that something energetic has started tugging.
It is more like, several years earlier, in a different rented boat
Mother has come along for the ride and to help. Leaning
Over the side,
the boy rests the back of one hand atop calm water,
Spreading out
his fingers to trail them in the wake.
Soon the boat is
near enough for him to reach awaterlily’slong strong stem.
Idly he pulls
close the huge pancake of a leaf where
Water-drops skip across the green surface like beads of mercury.
Then he lets go, or prepares to let go, the stem he has taken in hand.
Jonathan Bracker is the author of six
books of poetry, most recently This Day (WordTech Press, 2015). His poems have
appeared in Illinois Quarterly, The New
Yorker, Poetry Northwest, and Southern
Poetry Review as well as several anthologies.
