Snapshots at Raquette Lake

Once upon a time, I was an adjunct professor of English, and I had the opportunity to work very closely with the Honors Program at SUNY Cortland.  In Fall of 2004, we took the freshman Honors students up to Raquette Lake in the Adirondacks for a time of leadership training and community development (the "educated" way of saying we wanted the kids to get to know one another).  We spent the first evening playing card games and ping-pong and listening to them develop one of their first self-directed, self-consciously intellectual conversations on gender roles and social standards of beauty.  We took them on a ropes course and spent a lot of time out on the water.  It was a change for me as well, to be seen as a role model, to realize this was their experience, their weekend, not mine.  My good friend Ross Borden who taught in the department at that time capsized his kayak (one of the caps had been dislodged and the back compartment took on water).  Thankfully, he was safe and lost only his glasses.  I wrote this poem for the students in response to that weekend, in the style of Adrienne Rich's "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" which we had studied that term in Honors Seminar.

Snapshots of Raquette Lake

(1)

Here I am in the lodge

Drunk with conversation

Light-headed

Half afraid what my mouth will say next

Trying to listen well to a half-dozen excited voices.

We see wind on that water

Sense the danger, steer our vessel

To the familiar, to the confident

Tranquil skin of things

To what we know or

Think we know.

To sex.

(2)

This is me at 5:15, 45°

Legs encased in kayak

Proud novice in soaked sleeves

Shivering into the windy morning

While others sleep.

Being so cautious

Careful

Balanced

I always knew this would come easy for me:

Rolling over waves

Breaking through whitecaps, riding them

Back to breakfast, my eyes

On the shore and glad

No one sees—sad.

Wincing at the table

Each time I say, “I woke

With no clock. On five hours' sleep

With no clock.”

(3)

Here I am in the crown of a tree

Unafraid

Annoyed I feel compelled to prove it

My flesh in that harness—safe—

My skull in that helmet.

“You could suspend a bus from this wire”

The guide assures, as if falling is the danger

Tethered awkwardly up here

Like meat.

(4)

And here are the tenuous ducklings

On the water again, a dozen students, Ross, me.

I preen near a canoe

Poke my bill into their laughter

Smile sagely, shake that

Tail-feather in a flurry of swift strokes

At a distance slowing

Out of breath.

I say to Ross “How pleasant.

Indeed, how pleasant this is,

And, moreover,

Pleasant.”

His kayak slides out

And he slips under, slips

Out of air

Into the warm lake—

             I am conscious of breath

             Of the distant shoreline

             Ancient and serene

             Of inarticulate thoughts

             And strange calm

             Of the silent waiting for his

Return, bedraggled and clambering on

Capsized plastic

Struggling into the students' canoe

All of us

Paddling back quietly

All of us

Astonished by this flannel-drenched regal philosopher

Emerging dazzled and speechless from the unknown

Into our cold cave

Wondering what he saw down there

Where Peter grew afraid

What loon or Lazarus

Down there

Beneath the wave

Where his glasses

Watch the shadows

Glide to shore.

November 4, 2004