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from a photo by: Eleanore MacDonald
On the Water
by Wilda Morris
It was trains I grew up with, not boats. Even so,
I was thrilled to ride on the Maid of the Mist
when I was five, watching Niagara Falls pour down,
feeling the splash of white water, exalting in the sparkles
on the river, the beginnings of this other love,
a love that led me to the glass bottom boat
off the coast of Cancun, where I gazed
at gray angelfish and grouper, hogshead turtles
and parrotfish gliding through the many colors
of the Mesoamerican Coral Reef,
and onto a sailboat on Little Green Lake
in Wisconsin with friends who knew
how to use the wind on a sunny summer day,
where to drop fishing lines to make a catch–
and how to joke about it when none took the bait.
With this love of watercraft, I relished an afternoon
in which Ed rowed us around a pond in a park
in Champaign, Illinois, pontoon rides on a lake,
the ferry between Cape Cod to Nantucket,
and my brother-in-law’s motorboat supplied with water skis.
Best of all, the gondolier singing as he sculled
under foot bridges, passed palazzos
and ancient churches along the Grand Canal,
my sweetheart’s arms around me in an Italian city
that celebrates both love and history.
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