Water or light.  Or love.

You choose, Paul.  Pool.

Lake.  Our dream time

of changing rooms.  Suppose

Narcissus saw in that shimmering

mirror not himself but his brother--

who had no brother--four

years older who rose

out of water like love

in the stories after

her father had disastrously

spilled his seed in the sea.

My bedroom window looked up

the hill across the drive

and your retaining wall

and yard at you, who

never drew blind or shade,

not even when Zack spent

the night, wild boy

who famously had aimed

his motorcycle at his widow

mother’s garden party

and smashed through a glass door

to crash into the pool,

almost killing himself as he bled

sunken beneath the weight

of the machine he was too young

to own or drive.  Through my window

past my bedtime, I watched

as you two stripped off briefs

to put on swimming trunks

and then trade those, each

of you wearing the other’s

in some rite I didn’t understand,

not even after you turned off

one light, Zack the other.

Movies, drive-ins, I’d snuggle

close, laying my head

on your shoulder until a muscle

twitching in your arm

gave the sign it was time

for me to quit it.

I got it, never objected.

At Crystal Lake, you dived

from the highest board

hour after hour, perfecting

your form as I cannon balled in

after you, creating the spectacle

I intended.  As Zack drove

the speedboat he owned,

you taught me how to water ski.

Naked on a locker room

bench, he danced a hoochie-

coochie he learned in New Orleans

from his mother’s newest lover.

You didn’t tell me about

the tumor in your temple

over your left ear

until after the operation

when you showed me the packing

in the hole temporarily left

in your skull, but your headaches,

persisting much longer than

the wound, got worse, a curse

you couldn’t undo.  In your new Corvette,
we rode all over town
and watched the drive-in with
the top down.  Ignoring the show

on the screen, you touched my knee

and said, We’re pretty much

the same, you and me.

Dreamers, I guess.  A month later

my family moved thirty miles

east.  I never saw you again

or heard another word,

my fault far more than yours.

Yet still you step toward me,

forgivingly, out of High Rock Lake,

bleached brown hair dripping,

your sharp green eyes

amber-flaked, your bathing suit

too loose for your thin waist,

long limbed, taller than

anyone else on the beach,

a sense of purpose in your muscles

as you stride across the sand,

having risen out of

that god-seeded water

to tan nude hidden behind

wildflowers and brushwood

under a sun that loves you

as only memory can.