Absentee Indians and Other Poems

Meeting Place

Meeting Place Sweet garments of memory, I don't know how to follow you. Crossing and recrossing the borders. I was a mermaid once for ten minutes in a four-year-old's eyes and became one then and now when I remember and emerge. From the water laughing hair like seaweed. Crowned princess, twice one night in North Carolina one in Illinois my identity so easy Indian princess the one in Peter Pan. 123 Refuses like him to grow old. Simple distances those. II But these... At the boat landings, I see you raise your leg, knee bent, stepping to shore.Your hair falls across my eyes. I tilt our chin and flick it back, then brush it away with the back of our hand because the fingers hold to the handle of the bucket. The hand is chapped and tight with the cold night air. It smells of fish. Then you look up and I see you grin your triumph. I remember the tired joy we felt at bringing home a meal. But when we arrive, we see the game warden who took those fish we netted that hungry year. We zip up our thin jackets and rub our hands against our pant legs knowing we must try again and knowing he knew, too. I pass the bucket to the eager children, reach down to grab the boat and pull her further onto shore. The old man grasps the other side, together we ease it out ofthe water. But as I turn to nod my thanks, shouting faces, angry twisted mouths, crowd in at the edges of the night. They are that frowning game warden of sixty years past. They are the resort owners' overgrown children, cursing, throwing stones. You are stepping out of the boat.Your hair falls full across your eyes. When you push it back, I am standing before you, a protector. You are my past, standing before me. I am at the landing, one foot on shore, one in the shallow water. 124 ...