Steve Tomasko
Here, Now —Cunard Lake, mid-June There’s the floating, yes,and the sunsparked water,the heron who lifts her long gray selfout of the reeds easy as breathing. * There’s the lake, here,you say, just being all the time.We sip coffee, listen to the mewof the sapsucker. * Once, fishing on a rickety dock,a woman I did not know walked upthe slanted boards and told me(I guess as an alternative way of greeting)that sunglint on water triggers a waveof endorphins in our brains. * Large green dragonflies landon your shoulder, your legs.You watch their abdomens pump air,ask what their compound eyes see.Wonder how anyone would know.Before you knew me, you saidyou would have screamed,swatted them away. * The endorphin-story woman stareda moment at the water. Walked away.I kept fishing happily catching nothing. * Yes, there’s the floating, the driftingin our canoe. The sunreflecting water. * There’s a kingbird, you say. Precision The other dayI let go of perfection. Not that I ever reallyhad it, damn eel, damndesire to have it all. I let go and an easecame like a sighlike dropping onto a down pillowafter a long day. I gave up my desire for blight-less tomatoes, a weed-free lawn.Kicked flawless out of my vocabulary,don’t care if I ever finish my lifelist of North American birds. I let go—a bird in a nestbeak gapinghaving faithsomething will come. Steve Tomasko thinks about the dust mites that live under the couch and the eyebrow mites that live on all of us. He muses about the 5,000 species of bacteria that live in our mouths. Someone has to. He’s been published here and occasionally there. Steve lives in Middleton with his wife, Jeanie (also a poet), three cats and half an empty nest.