Fieldnotes after the Move

A prose ramble, a closing, one last long look

The smell of poplar on this side of the bay, their empty pods sticking to shoes and paws, their fluff in the air, and weeping willows thrashing about, the lake’s wind volatile, constant, water and air not so separate, what words do I know for the two in relation, in concert, the dogwoods’ red branches, “wetland indicators,” the flatness of water, its complete, rippling surface, boreal poplar smell, prairie poplar smell, poplar smell of home, distant, closest, a twig bobs past, the beaver that took down the saplings, the only signs are the marks the teeth left on thin trunks, the style, the mode, too young to be called trunks, “she’s young still, she’s seventy-three,” a held hand, the trees’ roots relying on the rocks of the berm and vice versa, and wild strawberry creeping out here, and dandelion floated out here, wind hard in the ears, midges ferocious in the still spots, stones arranged in a circle, to see someone dangling over an edge, a shed and one chair, windows broken, papered over, that present now the realm of the past as I stare across the bay and feel the edges soften, the place we’d sometimes stop can only be approximated from this side, and in the rain it’s completely obscured, a wide smudge of mist when it’s humid, anything that found its brief purchase now uprooted, the hand that’s been dealt and the way you play it, creeping roots, always there’s an urging toward life, even as disease destroys the processes, always a singing within the finitude, and now a sudden craving for soft serve, I think I have to go onto that next spit, that next human creation, lean myself toward the other side of the bay, one last long look, a swan indicating the route, past the deadfall, trees that don’t know ground anymore, goodbye to all that, and I don’t know the land route, so often I don’t know the land route, relying on the wind to take me out to the point to watch the swallows feed, their barn swoops, I have to feel like I’ve accomplished something, but there’s the perennial goodbye of it, goodbye, for years, to all that, and the soft serve was always “like silk,” we always had the cones in the car, the windshield mediating, a cormorant comes up for air, land still just a hint in the distance, a dark blue indication, her knee-jerk anger at lakeside development, at such plenitude, picture windows, I’m sitting now tableaued by a thing she’d want to complain about, her name still on the deed, in the middle of it complaining about more of the same, setting down our shallow birch roots as the soil heats up and the beaver approaches, all that’s to do now is wait in this sweet safety, look out at the flat expanse of water, dance to any music, snap our fingers, and those big houses piled up along that shoreline, the ice cream cones, you can’t see any of it from here, there never was much to say, there’s been everything to talk about, the words long ago unhinged themselves, intention still struggling to the surface, goodbye to all that, but not yet, oh, to erupt the rippling skin, the cormorant’s resurfacing, that effort, the swallows break formation