Just next door to where my children once learned to dive,
were swaddled in warm towels by their grandmother,
ate salt and vinegar chips, lips chattering, turning blue.
Now three boys leap off the raft,
their parents watch from chairs on the lawn.
We spy on them through the fence slats,
glimpses of people we don't know now living a life
that was once always.
They've cut down the tree where our children carved initials
that last summer we were here,
that last night when we built a fire
and sang
and canoed under the stars.
Their boys flip backard off the raft
holding each other under water
when my father-in-law would have shouted careful,
careful,
and never moved.
The loons still cry in the morning,
my mother-in-law could still be inside,
talking on the phone with the long curly cord while she
covered salads with damp paper towels to keep them crisp.
The house where we met.
