Al Pittman, April 11, 1940 - August 26, 2001


Launch

I was six the summer I learned to swim
in a lake, in Maine
face to face with my father.
His beard is as black as the water
and when he smiles his small teeth
glisten like a flash of trout
mid-leap against the lowering sun.

He is just within, and out of my reach:
thirty-six years old,
as I am now thirty-six.
We circle each other, like Pisces.

I remember thunderheads gathering
at the edge of the sky, time
pressing us both forward.
The water was cool and dark
like the river near our home
where he canoed and fished and where
I poured out by the fistful
the ash of his teeth and bones.
How it glinted like mica as it ran
through my fingers to drift
across the sun-studded surface of the river
rain falling
on a lake in Maine
my father's face
like God moving
over the face of the waters.
I believed in it
and pushed off.


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filed under: poetrywriting