Saturday, November 26, 2011

The Beginning is Near

Soon they will come, the police. The city workers with their trucks. Our city of tents, our fights--all of it will disappear. Scrub away our presence, uproot the trees. Pile up the marble slabs we slept on.

My mind drifts back in time. I am fishing on Lake Michigan with my father in his boat. This is shortly before he will die. My parents had bought a retirement cottage not far from Grand Rapids. The light on the water, that silvered turquoise water, the peaks of the waves glisten in the sun--even the Voice is lulled to somnambulant slumber. I think of my mother--of that last summer, the summer before her final illness, while she is still herself--sitting on the porch--martini hour--watching the sunset over the lake, the jet skiers droning and whining like gigantic mechanized insects, a moment I want to go on forever. A tableaux receding into the distance, like the light of stars that no longer exist.

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