“Look, waterlilies! ” I say, stopping the car. <br />My wife opens her door <br />and leaning out, takes in the fresh air. <br /> <br />A small island near-by captures my sense for adventure <br />and I’d like to have a picnic on it <br />but I don’t see a boat to take us out there. <br /> <br />I stop on a dirt road by a boggy swamp. “How lovely” I say. <br />“How’s that? ” my wife says. “Why do you think it’s beautiful? <br />All the trees are dead.” “Yes, that’s true. But no man will ever <br />bother to do anything here...it’s forbidding. So it’s never going to be ruined. Maybe I should take a snapshot? ” <br /> <br />A great heron swoops out of the grassy marsh. <br />A giant owl glides over us and drops into the top of a pine tree. <br /> <br />Snapshot: the point by the water where we eat our sandwiches. <br />Snapshot: my wife wearing her sunhat by the lakefront. <br /> <br />Way off in the Adirondacks between Fish House and Corinth <br />there’s a young woman selling bread by the side of the road. <br />She’s wrapped up in a sleeping bag, filing her nails. <br />She’s plucked her eyebrows and has platinum blonde hair. <br />She wants to be somewhere else. She wants to be Marilyn Monroe. <br /> <br />Snapshot: the chasm and the rushing river below. <br /> <br />It’s obvious to us now that we were saved from a desolate life, <br />off by ourselves, alone at the end of the road, <br />selling bread to whomever got lost or stumbled upon us. <br /> <br />We didn’t get to Hope Falls like we started out to, <br />but we did spend the day together and we did love each other.<br /><br />S. R. Lavin<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/desolation-lake/
