Allotment Notices

from Field Stones
by Robert Kinsley

  1.

Every year the shoreline offers
a little more of itself to the
water, rising in acceptance.  Nothing
remains of the beach in vermilion except
a narrow strip of sand, and last year
the bridge was raising for the coming and
going of boats.  Day in and day out we are
landmarks lost along the way

2.

My uncle is fishing off the Huron Pier,
a line cast into the dark water.  Whatever
has washed into the dark water.  Whatever
has washed into his shore will not recede.
Some days he still rides the crests, most
days he is towed under.  the cry of gulls
like sisters overhead catches his attention
and he remembers the way he followed the
waterline, all those wonderful days

3.

afloat.  It's raining a little
the temperature pushing
fifty after a long week
of bitter cold.  Mid-January
and I'm out on the ice,
with my wife and son, gloriously
alone this Sunday morning.  A deer
has wandered onto the lake, and we
watch its slow progress, stopping

as it does, nose in the air, nodding
the surface of understanding, then moving
on, making its way across the best it can.
And we go back to our fishing, three bodies
huddled in this the one and only kingdom.