The sun is shining brilliantly here on L— Lake, where the waters lap slowly along the shore, and all that remains of winter is the large slab of ice that lay dying in the lake’s center. Its fingers will be further away tomorrow.

I’m sitting at the water’s edge, where our floating dock used to jut out into the lake. Time and weather have destroyed it. During the summers I’d laze around on it, fruitlessly waiting for a girl in a bikini to go by, eventually giving up and going for a swim or a row out to the islands.

The evenings I spent fishing with my father, the sounds of families getting together for dinner carrying across the water. I remember sitting there, wearing my dad’s Marine Corps cap with captain’s bars on it, swiping at the errant mosquitos that would come for a taste of the bait. I don’t know if he ever caught any fish while he was here; I will never know the answer.

(March 2010)

The sun is shining brilliantly here on L— Lake, where the waters lap slowly along the shore, and all that remains of winter is the large slab of ice that lay dying in the lake’s center. Its fingers will be further away tomorrow.

I’m sitting at the water’s edge, where our floating dock used to jut out into the lake. Time and weather have destroyed it. During the summers I’d laze around on it, fruitlessly waiting for a girl in a bikini to go by, eventually giving up and going for a swim or a row out to the islands.

The evenings I spent fishing with my father, the sounds of families getting together for dinner carrying across the water. I remember sitting there, wearing my dad’s Marine Corps cap with captain’s bars on it, swiping at the errant mosquitos that would come for a taste of the bait. I don’t know if he ever caught any fish while he was here; I will never know the answer.

(March 2010)