No Boats on the Still Grey Bay

But a hundred yards out a bevy of swans
drifts like scattered sheets of paper.

Rain bands trail a purple squall
off to our south. The lake has receded

since last time my wife and I were here.
Squirrels have pitted walnuts

and spat the blackened shells in the sand,
and the county has knocked down

my favorite poplar. It’s good weather
to be a swan or a husked shell, I think,

cold but not bone-cold, windless;
to be a doe galloping down a gravel road.

Sarah watches the murky horizon
through her lens. She’s unhappy

with the pictures she’s taken.
There’s nothing to focus on out there.

I hop from the stump of the poplar
to a chunk of rabbled concrete.

Good weather to be a shoreline dressed
in stone, I think, disguised

as my better self, for once. To be sober
as the gun-metal waters near the shore.