The Other Side of the Lake

Laura Lush
From:   Hometown. Vehicule Press (Signal Editions), 1991.

Frank and Bea Donkersley lived on the other side,
the sandy part where their dock jutted
out in a long brown tongue.
Around their cottage were the birches
and the laugh lines of sun at dusk.
Our cottage was on the rocky side&mdash:a chocolate
melted into marble.
Every morning our father would throw us off the dock
emptying that two room cottage
like you'd empty a fishbowl.
On the other side we could see Frank and Bea
sitting at the dock's edge sipping coffee,
Frank's hairy chest like a blanket of spiders.
In the afternoon, we'd beg them to take us over,
our orange motor boat plotting through the water.
When we got there Frank would stand up and salute us
with his tall gin, in his plaid bathing suit, the white
peaked cap. Then he'd walk over and say, "Fee, Fie, Fo, Fum,"
cup his giant hands over our pink-shell ears,
lift us up as if lifting us from the earth we'd been planted
in for a little while, the slender parsnips of our bodies
dangling so we could see his face—
those wonderful fuzz-covered ears creeping open.

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