Lake Hattie, Wyoming
What I Wish I Had Known
— for David
Whenever I think of that September,
I see the world in amber.
Well, not the world but
the lake. Late summer,
a September that was
still hot and the lake still cold.
A season of heat and high mountain wind
followed by days of mirror calm.
Across the water, vetch turns
the hillside into autumn plum
and geese honk across a wide quiet sky.
Butter, we say, when
the lake is smooth as glass
and our skis glide easily along the surface.
It’s always water I remember.
It’s always too cold, but after the jump
we call it refreshing.
I was young then
though I felt old. I had failed to shape
a career out of shaky confidence,
a marriage from exhaustion.
Have we always been tired?
Even then, the days were full and
we felt too many steps behind.
I recall this now with some sort of whimsy.
The glass is dusty, the view distorted.
Time turns routine to ritual, mistake into lesson.
I wish I would have known
that every small thing was just that: small.
A disagreement is not a parting. And sadness,
though pressing, will not erase you.
Doubt does.
But you keep walking.
Some days a crawl, some a skip.
You just keep going.
Whenever I walk into September,
I see you and me: the icy plunge
in late summer heat —
the pierce of pain
the jolt of relief and
our sudden easy joy.
— Drew Myron