My husband hovers at the lip of the water,
curved threshold of coarse sediment, then glides
into the gray-green lake with dolphin intention.
On the shore, on a weathered wooden bench, I
sit by his towel, bundled like a seal, and squint.
He is of landlocked stock, joyous in a vast
aquatic basin, torpedoing farther and farther
into a speck on summer's late-morning horizon.
"The chosen spot," the Seneca tribe named this
lake and land where many had disappeared.
He is nowhere and elsewhere in the hollow.
Out of sight, he is no longer mine. I fear
as one untutored in the skills of water.
I shudder at the howls of motorized
propellers, tentacles pulling him
down the breathless deep.
Each minute I am Penelope,
unknitted and unraveling
yet faithful that his body will deliver
himself back to me, stroke by stroke,
a locomotive with stamina and fortitude
against the expanse, algae, and amniotic allure ...
Then, a glint in the distance, foam surface brimming,
I thrill and trill the bird of my heart. Blue of cloudless sky,
polished blue of a wedding in an earlier year in a distant
valley, sky blue of an eiderdown cocooning us to sleep.