Squatting on a flat rock

You brushed your teeth

with lake water so clear

it looked more a rumor

than anything else

You gathered driftwood, bones

along the black pebble shore

weathered the same

we ate pears in a bowl

of jack pines lakeside

And how am I this way?

that I see such a thing

and think, performance

if I woke tomorrow

as a deer, I fear I’d dismiss

my own antlers, steaming flanks

frost-strewn prairie grass

as a gaudy display of nostalgia.