Shards of light shatter off the water
this summer Michigan morning,
sun slanting like an axe’s edge.

The girls rousing in the dawn, stirring,
the fishy breeze flowing from the West
and the promise of unfettered freedom.

J. isn’t home, but his boat keys dangle
from the iron hook, ready to Ruth’s hand, 
and readily taken–the call sounded,

the five girls don their colored glasses 
and take to the wood-paneled craft
hulking with muted speed and power.

Key turned, motor purring, bubbling water
rising from the propeller’s spin–
now they glide out, like a bold swan

cleaving the glassine surface, the
prow painting a silvered “V.” Ruth urges
the throttle forward, the rumble building 

to a roar, the thin, triangular wake 
swelling to waves: rows of soldiers, 
an orderly force, invading the shore.

She laughs, the raw power of the boat
rising–the girls all grow heady, 
overpowered with sun, water, and youth.

Objects abound like model train towns—
leafy willows dipping, fishermen
drifting, buoys and rafts floating—

only a frame to the urgent motion 
of this boat now carving circles that
cut the freshly incarnated wake in half

and the circles, the spinning, becomes
an intoxicating challenge to beat back
the wind and–slicing–capture the past. 

Past Orr’s Point, spiraling, the speed
increasing, the prow lifting to the sun
the motor stampeding into the light.

And then, a crunch, crash, and crumbling:
this steed bucking and twisting suddenly:
Ruth cuts the motor, the prow now flaccid.

Looking back, there is a cartoon scene:
one old man clinging to a rowboat, fishing
poles sinking, an oar outstretched toward

another venerable gentleman, eyes
full of fear and fire, grasping the blade,
pulled inchingly, achingly into the boat, 

blood boiling up behind him, staining the 
greenish-blue water with red, the three
primary colors that make white and 

in this he moves toward the light, the 
lifeblood ebbing from his leg, which 
the propeller, those cast bronze blades,

nearly amputated. This man–who only
expected to catch fish and bullshit with 
his friend–succumbed to the void. 

Where did we stray? 

Who will pay? 

What is the reason? 

Whence this season? 

Why did it shatter?

Does it matter 
that she is twenty-four?

Is she more or less ruthless or an 
arrow shot by fate to bring him home?