Ritenuto: With My Daughter at the Lake

The Falls Road northern light was fading gray:

a sudden snowfall swept us eastward like

a curtain rising at the driveway to the lake.

I stopped my car beside the bridge and hiked out to the day’s

last scene which starred my strong and happy sons

fast racing up along a gravelled path,

each to test the measure of his breath

and call his sister, “Here, come see, I’ve won.”

She, beside me walking with her secret joys,

motioned her two gloved hands airborne

toward a stick out on the lake beyond the boys,

a dark branch balanced at the dam’s ledge, in the roar

and plunging of that river on whose cascade into noise

it seemed to hesitate, poised there at the edge of more.