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| Image / Connor McManus |
St. Mary’s of the Lake
“Perched on our shoulders, / the dead ride with us, teetering like pyramids of water skiers, forming / enormous wings.”--Barbara Crooker
The first night
of a residency where I know no one
I go down to the lake
wound up from the long drive,
watch the sunset on the Adirondacks.
It’s Sunday night, weekenders gone,
a calm begins to settle. A few yards away,
a father lights a fire,
a child tubes, a mother
shouts, “Stay close to the pier.”
I feel, not lonely, but aware of my aloneness
as I try to massage the migraine away,
try to slow down like the lake
lulling against its rocks,
when I think of my stepfather
whose legs were more sea than land,
who tried to teach me to take my time,
enjoy life more.
I parallel play with poets
who write in their rooms with doors open
or gather together on porches facing the lake.
I pray, I write, I idle and read
I try writing exercises I’d never try at home,
picking twenty words randomly
and writing from them
which leads to this.
I go down to the lake again
this time to kayak with new friends
who instruct me to hold the paddle lightly,
to relax my grip,
the opposite of what I’d thought.
The next day strolling Beach Street
where the lake begins
and the steamboats await their passengers,
I spot my stepfather on his sailboat
one foot on deck, one on the bow
smiling at me,
tipping his cap. © Maria Giura
Maria Giura PhD is the author of. two poetry collections published by Bordighera Press—If We Still Lived Where I Was Born (Nov. 2025) and What My Father Taught Me—and a memoir, Celibate (Apprentice House Press). An Academy of American Poets winner, Giura teaches writing workshops for Casa Belvedere Cultural Foundation. instagram.com/
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