By Marie-Louise Meyers

It’s only when I sleep I fill the pond
with missing water responsive to my needs.
I seek refuge in the creek now
where the mesmerizing miracle begins
holding me spellbound in relief.
I am the small child once again,
more splash than finesse when Dad says to me:
“let’s swim across the lake, only a half mile away!”
Searching my father’s face as if a buoy to hold me up,
I did with a leap of faith, going across and coming back.
Withholding any praise, Mother took Dad to task,
feeling betrayed. How could she be aghast
at my conquest of the waves,
which didn’t come in predictable stages!

Dad lived ten years after Mother did,
bewildered by the turn of the tide, floundering within,
looked toward me as I led him beyond
the fragmentation of his life to the other side,
even to other enterprises,
and I became the life raft he once was to me:
“whatever you say,” he said, eyes fixated with absolute belief.
Sometimes bogged down thinking I’m reaching a dead end,
I look beyond the everyday borders which keep me confined,
gaze into my father’s watery blue/green eyes,
and take that same leap of faith I once did,
without being finalized.