Final Evening at Oxbrook Camp

Our loons still scull on the pewter calm of the lake, the chick having dodged the eagle one more day. The valorous drake and hen both held it between their bodies while the raptor circled. Reprieve. And here I am, old. I stooped an hour ago to dump the pail of dace I'd trapped, then watched them scatter, the ones we hadn't hooked through their dorsals for bait. Twenty or so now swim at large— still prey, but not to us, Who are headed home in the morning. I’m poised to throw away this clutch of wilting black-eyed Susans picked wild by my wife of all these years to grace our painted metal table, where we lifted ladders of spine from fat white perch, last supper. So here I am, this aging man who wants somehow to write only one love song after another. I pause at dusk, I blink, I toss Our dim bouquet into late summer’s woods.