(For Tom)   

Sitting beside the water after hiking,  
it’s easy to let go, leg muscles tired  
from doing the work they love, carrying me  
up and down the steep ridges of the Driftless.  
Slouched on a wooden bench on the small,  
floating dock, I surrender to ripple and drift,  
dragonflies skimming the water in a blur  
of blue, the chitin of their translucent wings  
veined with delicate fretwork. Now and then, 
a tree swallow swoops and skims the surface, 
though there are less of them each day, as insects 
decline and late summer whittles things down,  
unrolling its canvas of russet and yellow  
and bronze, the prairie swaying around us  
like a page in a child’s illuminated book. 
Lifting my face to the sun, there is nothing 
to do but breathe, my soul unstitched 
from the stiff binding we call time, no need 
to do anything but be, that verb we are taught 
to banish because it’s passive, because it slows  
things down, when in truth it’s everything 
in existence, all that happens in the world— 
clouds mirrored like dreams on the water, 
the tiny sweat bees sipping salt from my skin 
like flecks of molten gold, the shape of you,  
breathing beside me, everything balanced  
and alive in the moment, the way we are in time— 
was, is, and will be present together,  
existing all at once, on this bright page,  
torn from the end of summer.