Before we returned to the camp site, I had to skip a few stones across Mongaup Pond. I think the last time I skipped stones was at another camp site in Cape Cod with my Chinese friends. My shoulder became sore.
Take your video recorder and record rocks skipping across a lake. Take your video recorder and record lines of orange construction barrels as they pass your car. Take your video recorder and record the rain pelting against plastic materials. Take your video recorder and record a marshmallow catch a flame in the fingers of crackling campfire while the roasting stick leads out of frame. Take your video recorder and record silently waving bars of light back and forth from flashlights into the night sky, onto the concrete path, into the trees sifting in the air.
Elizabeth has never seen a flat stone picked up from an unkempt beach of a pond and tossed into it as the stone skims the surface of water; skipping several times until the stone settles down with others at the pond’s bottom. She tried to skip a small stone herself. The stone stumbled into the pond without skipping. It won’t be her last time to try.
Looking down, Elizabeth kept her feet off the ground by placing her feet cautiously on large and partially buried rocks. She would occasionally slip, but this did not stop her.
While others had their Styrofoam cup people’s arms wave in wild positions, Elizabeth’s Styrofoam cup person had one of its hands in one of its orange paper pockets.
Support ٥ Alfred Lee
A dense pattern of
Light green dark green flowers
Printed on an open umbrella
Shading from the June sun
Resting on Mother Yun’s shoulder.
Her elbow gently closed,
Hand above the handle
Of clear plastic amber.
The early summer sun
Dusting, sifting below
Her small eyes, head inclined,
Lips quiet.
The wind slides soothes silently
Across her burgundy dress.
Rectangle pipes to frame
Another rectangle design inside.
She leans against this fence
The color of the sky that day.
Her dress folds into waves
Of fabric leading down
The dress to the firm held hand,
Her daughter.
Mother’s fingers touching
Her own daughter’s shoulder,
Her precious head heavy from the day
Fast by her mother’s side.
Father feels the flat gloss finish
A photo taken years ago
Wishing for a granddaughter.
