To The Other Side

Out of the blue on this summer day Richie asks me if I want to swim with him across the lake Sure what the hell and that is that I will match the older boy’s vim and whim Two strong boys armored with Nietzsche arrogance and Tolkien muscle Armada of scarecrows and wrists assemble on Wally’s manmade beach To accompany us on the two-and-a-half-mile odyssey Across the cold and chop of wind Dad hunches over a leaky rowboat In hand-to-hand combat with splintered creaky oars Dennis kneels on a music sheet paddle board Pink baton at his bearded black throat In we go A wave and grin goodbye to Wally’s beautiful daughter Wendy Richie to Wally’s wonderous wife Janet And to our moms’ arms crossed up on the tennis court hill For hours little did we know Dad says Bobby! Sarah’s coming up underneath you ha ha Richie separates and heads north not east like a slashing madman Hey Hey yells Dennis his spotter Imagine myself a turtle with hot sun egg frying on its back in the black water Begin to feel the razor teeth of pike at my toes Biting them off one by one I stop and panic thrash and splash them away give them my toenails Richie straightens out far behind me Weight of the bloated world holding me up Spaceship in orbit bellied against the Earth Halfway across I assume I can only tell by the guess of cumulus clouds My knees shoulders neck need an oiled wrench to complete each heave and rotation Rust and barnacles growing on me Finally I pass over the turquoise drop off of the other side Pink mustard to my sutured eyelids Line of shore the trees a quarter mile ahead I think dad yells good enough good enough Salvages me in with what chattering bones remain retrievable Face gone Snaps my arms and legs to the rowboat’s aluminum bench Cannot bend this brass statue to a sitting position Upside down the only way I can fit in For the long trip back within my dad’s singing voice Richie crawls hands and knees up on that beach Holds its sand in his hands lets it sift through as a time glass Never lets me forget that I finished and you did not but we won’t tell the shimmering women When and if You the brother I never had and I get back Teeth left like unrecovered treasure at the bottom of Torch Lake.