Minnow Poem by Fleda Brown

It is not the way it used to be.Aunt Cleone is losing her memory,my father refuses to paint the cottage porch,

the rowboat rots in the yard. I amwilling to let go of what I remember,not completely, but let it open out

into the past and fill it and funnelforward to this place where I actuallylie on the end of the dock swirling my finger

in the water, watching the minnowsmove without seeming to move, invisibletwitches, one, two, three minnows the color

of sand. I must be in the middle of my life, the way I feel balancedbetween one thing and another. As if I have

no hands or arms, parting the world as it reaches my face. Like a minnow, goneon little wings, a blush of sand from the bottom.

Sometimes I open my eyes in the darkand it feels as if I'm moving. I lose
my loneliness, surrounded with dark, like water.