Drinking Gin in a Kayak on a Still Lake in June The world above The trees even to the crisping of leaves at the edges. The tall grasses along the shore. The large silvery rocks. The empty Adirondack chairs. Docks, sleeping boats. Clouds. Blue sky with streaks of soft pink. Even the arc of a bird in flight, the race of a dog along the bank, My own foot over the side of the kayak. All twinned in the perfect mirror of the lake. An inverted universe, an exact upended replica. Then a fish jumps, or my hand falls into the water or the kayak rocks as I bring the glass to my mouth and the world below trembles, suddenly warps and wavers in fluid abstraction - swirls of color and shapes still head over heels but incomprehensible chaos Is it too much to hope that it will be so, at the hour of, the moment of - an instant of perfect stillness, pristine clarity Then soft, a sudden hallucinatory dissolve into a world without edges, as I flow into the prismatic mystery.
Dorothy Cantwell has worked as an educator, actress, and playwright, Her work has been published in the Long Island Literary Journal, Brownstone Poets Anthology, Constellate Literary Journal, Flash Boulevard, Assisi: An Online Journal of Arts & Letters, River and South Review, Poetrybay, and Angel City Review, among other print and online journals. She has been featured at various venues in NYC where she lives and works. She studies poetry with Sister Fran McManus in the St Francis of Assisi Poetry Workshop.
Amethyst Review 