Meryl: Autobiography

I was born on the Lake where God loves
to wade wearing tongues of waves
in a lashing dress. I decipher white wing
scratches, seagull sign against gray sky.
I know the ways black stones seek,
can weigh the shine of lake glass inside
skirt pockets. My body is haunted
by the grandmothers who never leave
these shores we know, the living cold
and the way it frosts over
all our memories: the moments preserved
as a corpse made from fear and sharded
dreams. Scattered stars dash themselves
upon the Lake as coyote twitches
in her sleep. I remember the wrong shade
of green, a color that could kill us.
And like Erie, I was once a Lake on fire.
From my throat a red flower begins
to weep. Memory: the ripple in a body
of water. Still, the memory of stone stretches
so much longer. When even cliffrock erodes,
when the bricks that hold our bank erect
effloresce, when the lighthouse burns out
like a flame in a day moth’s mouth
I climb up, always toward heaven, and leap—
God catches me with gray water
arms and sodden wings outstretched.
God also loves
to rest.

Photo by Jake Blucker on Unsplash.