in memory of Miriam Goodman

Like actors in summer stock
we played our best selves
visiting her rustic cabin.

I lay on the floor in a back
room with the difficult
grandson

and played Candyland
until he went down
for a nap.
 
Paula played Bach’s
cello suites
on the screened porch,

each note a mournful
summons,
orderly, unfolding.

*    *    *    *    *    *
On the dock
with their father
the boys learned

to extract the hook
without tearing
the flesh, to cast

their lines
in a joyous arc.
Leslie swam

across the lake,
her body a rhythmic
voluptuousness,

her steady plashing
a signal to the terrier
ashore. Miriam hailed



and embraced summer
and winter people
in the annual

June convocation
at the beach, updates
and invitations

all around.
They could see
she was sick, bewigged,

but she was here,
now, steadying herself
against the piling,

going in slowly,
the burning chill
on her thighs,

on her hips, her waist,
as she studied the familiar
lake, its inlets, pines

and boulders vivid
as the cabin’s manifest,
the list of essential linens

and batteries and cast iron
pots passed on each year—
revised and copied—

for her beloveds.

*    *    *    *    *

Grilled vegetables,
Beet soup, corn, and nine
of us round the table

pouring and laughing,
stories of the day
taking on their initial

color and flavor
before we cook them
in legend and myth,

summer’s brine.
Beneath a full moon,
inside their tent,

the boys undress,
and we see their limbs—
animated cave paintings

against the tent’s fabric—
or a shadowplay
enacting one summer day.

Scrabble players
assemble at the table.
This year Jules wins

every game, and when
she laughs, her red hair
ripples as it did

when she was ten
and wild as her eldest
awake in his sleeping bag,

looking up at his grandmother’s
sky, imagining the salamanders
he’ll catch tomorrow.