Skimming across the unbroken film,
brother and sister, we are
kayaks brushing bursting lilies,
drifting towards the invisible bend.

Clicks and whistles hang in the air
filling the comfortable mist of blue
stillness scratched only by thin wisps
of fluttering leaves and feathers

and then the warm gulp of the oar,
delving past the green glass, probing
for soil in a colorless pool, like yesterday,
Gram, when I looked into your eyes

and knew that, even as you
stood before me, you were gone.
A charcoal silhouette looming where
gold once echoed off your skin.

Pictures flashing through my memory
betray my veil of composure,
drawing up visions of splattered aprons,
or your rosy histories

of crinoline spider webs
etched into bare, peachy shoulders.
My poor brother, arriving too late,
could never guess your rife verbosity

that bounced about the hall,
until the grumble of hungry stomachs
was blanketed in bubbles of laughter
from toothless smiles and wrinkled lips.

A low hanging branch cups my cheek,
guiding me back to the river, whose crook,
once melting seamlessly into the far shoreline,
now shone as a staunch athwart pass.

So kayaks row on, already the
aching cold of Gram’s blank stare adding
my crackling joints to the sparse clatter,
floating from the dock where the waves lap

up against faded oak. I sat
on the pier last night, watching the tide
swell and crumble on the distant beach. It
heaved over and over like a

lung. Pulsing on. Involuntary and ceaseless.
Chest rising and falling and rising
until the beauty of breath is forgotten,
and the waves, still rolling, grow unwelcome.