Good to Know When It Could Be Sunny
by D. R. James

The lake sometimes went calm,
no longer rolling against the shore but
undulating the way you’d picture
sheets spreading and smoothed,
slow motion, a mother or a lover
gently raising and lowering
the broad cloth, catching the air
to square that expanse with the bed.

Just so.

And such thoughts came
when the bed warmed only
to my restless presence,
a few blank dreams
I would have gladly lived.

The days crept by slowly,
and the lone smell on pillows
told me to do laundry,
to pay bills,
to water plants,
to consider stringing some lines.

Forty – maybe eighty? – feet out
gulls would level west, clear,
it would seem, to the horizon,
and then the lake would plane
south, tip east, catch fleeting pink
across its ashen wings.



 

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