Weekend friends Poem by Susan McMaster

When they leave, the lake
sharpens, clears
as if we'd turned the lens
on your father's binoculars,
hills step closer,
water flashes in our faces
and we lie back, stare sleepily
at loons, the other shore.
"Alone at last," you say,
tipping your hat over your eyes,
but together at last
is how it feels,
gathered into the bay
with the rocks and the pines
and crows crak-crakking
much louder it seems
than minutes before
when we called Goodbye, goodbye
to weekend friends.


Now we doze on the beach,
absorbed under a comforter
of hazy clouds,
lulled by the whoosh and buzz
of fly and wind.
Through half-closed lids
you swing closer, recede
into the burn of sun from sand
forward and back
forward and back
with the loolooloo of waves


I surge, retreat,
fall into dream,
matching your dance
with my own sleepy drift
alone
together
at last and
all one