Cam at Seventeen
It is here and this. And there and that.
Small as an upturned leaf.
What way? Those points of the compass nonsense
and the sun only somewhat telling.
You will scold and all will still be a blur.
Every fifth or sixth word heard:
one
there
clinging
night
She lay down beside me and spoke of
a bird’s nest and mountains while you turned
pages with your beautiful hands elsewhere – in that room
I now sometimes enter, feeling soothed.
This trailing of my hands in the water. God in the stern.
And you holding
a book, its covers
like plovers' eggs.
The egg I will peel shortly, fashioning
an escapade. A wild chase. The leap
onto what is now clearly stone.