Seed Across Snow

Echo Lake

65 Echo Lake when it rains and thunders on the big mossy lake, women toss in their beds, not yet knowing they are alone there, that their husbands have risen into the black hot of early morning and have pushed their boats away from the rickety docks. Quietly, quietly (hush!), the men row across dark water, watch lightning’s narrow cracking in the dark bone of sky, laugh and shake their heads at the mention of return. searchers will find them later, sitting but still in the boat, after the women have been roused by the memory of thunder, after they have measured out the coffee and begun to listen to the hearts straining to beat inside percolators on the stoves, after they have gone to the cabin windows, and gone back to cabin windows to look out at the brightening skies. ...