The final day of the tablet is untranslatable and inscribed upside down.
My heart filled with something that might have been grief but poured out as joy.
It was the last of everything, the last day of the visitor to his own home.
There was the morning at the Silverton Slip, father and daughter
Building a fairy house on the picnic table, waiting for warmth to swim,
The occasional stray peripatetic pensioner, with or without dog
Pausing to ask and/or relate information about circulating bears.
Then the first swim, barely a dive, then the second. Noon.
There was the farewell luncheon over olive sandwiches and plum crumble.
There was Bigelow Bay, one last time, out where the children drowned
After tipping their canoe, where it seemed like half the poems
Of six years and a day were composed, where the visitor first came home,
The water like a stack of windows giving on infinity under the glacier.
There was the fish knife the daughter found, the sunken boat ladder,
Farewell to the gas station attendant and the lottery vendor,
To the RCMP officer and the recently legal alien from the plains,
To Nonie Diana the Famous Poet, to Rebekkie Mama, to Wendy,
The third swim, fourth swim, fifth swim, each time maybe one more,
The happy patient outliving every relapse and starting to feel immortal,
And finally the final swim, wilderness about to block out the sun.
I sprinted out on a single breath, tearing into the late gold lake
Like a bear tearing into honey, twisting to see the cherry tips of maples
Lining the shore where the pilings of the first wharf, a century gone,
Lurk, dark pillars of.a mythical lost kingdom, below the gleam,
And I dove down, slapped a broken snag of one such, deeper,
Snatched a white rock glowing on the bottom, surfaced into setting sun.
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