Another Creature: Poems

Girls and Lakes

Girls and Lakes When girls are small, their fathers toss them off boats and watch as they sink and surface flapping, little bird-fish that they are, mouthspouts raised to suck air. Whatever animal fear they know is roughly licked away, by waves or air currents or songs of gulls crossing sky. On the dock girls sing and comb each other’s hair, catch Jesus spiders, let them go. Later their boyfriends frown as they pinch the soft woman-dough their bikinis cut into, succulent pillowing swells at their breast tops and thighs, satiny spills of hips not danced or kicked or starved away. And when they are full grown creatures they unwrap the towels from their waists and let them fall, or gingerly slip off their t-shirts behind the pine rows. Walking with pride or shame through broken shells to the sand that takes their footprints, they adjust sagging straps, suck in a good lunch. But the moment 12 their ankles cut the first ripples, all of their body’s water remembers: wading into lakes they know their legs’ awful strength, shiver off waves that rise to their kneecaps, crotches, shoulders, the tips of their hair, and know themselves buoyant, invincible, offering their lovely heads unto the lakes, and weightless—the way they have always wanted to feel, entirely received. 13 ...