There is the man who wears a bell
on his knee in that novel. It serves as a telling,
like the buoy near the north shore that rang out
the first night here—a warning to scatter. To give
berth, wide and slow and steady.
He walks in the garden, this man, this character,
this symbol, but there are no gardens here. Here,
instead, there is the unkempt lilac and drying pine
and the wild thimbleberry.
And the lake lunging, noisy and troubling, and then
still, the waves no more than shaken foil.
The small purple wildflower clinging to the stone
where I saw the butterflies—along the south shore, along
the point with the name of a girl you once loved.
The stone, reddish and swirled, bared
and visible below the water. With the hollowed out
bowls for smaller stones of grey.
The stream coppery and bloodied at its mouth.
Bells for me—markers
of something, these. Not a warning to disperse,
as with him.
Nor a god or faith, I don’t know—
something
of confirmation and bliss.
