Thornapple River, 1967

The sun peeks between trees

as Dad, my brother, and I

drift by a dock with missing boards.

No motor boats yet, no wakes

to aim our canoe into, no smell of gas;

the cottage we pass in these first

glints at dawn, its dark windows shut,

rowboat overturned on saw horses,

weeds growing around it, seems

silent about the return of

something old in the fields.

Our lines drag tiny wakes like intricate

satellites along the drop-off

searching the pull of a bluegill.

Dad taught us never to stand up.

In a life preserver, as we watch the bait,

I entertain my dream I’ve learned

from being on the river,

to paddle along, steering mostly, with

the flow of river, floating beyond

woods and fences and empty

back lots of factories, eventually

to dunes where larger currents

on Lake Michigan open out,

and to then paddle north,

to follow the curve of land

to straits and then the other lakes,

where somewhere along the journey

I imagine I’m seen from shore

a lonely Icarus in a distant canoe,

and eventually the St. Lawrence

and then after more paddling

to see and smell before me

the salt and sky of ocean.

Because I will start

early in the morning

like we always do,

getting there before winter

will not be a stretch.

Thomas Allbaugh works in three genres, poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. He has published a chapbook of poems, The View from January, with Kelsay books, as well as a novel and a short story collection. He recently retired from teaching at Azusa Pacific University in Southern California.