Balanced together on a paddleboard
my daughter and I float across the pond.
Already we’ve splashed and tipped
and swum and squealed. Already
we’ve followed dozens of blue dragonflies
with our eyes and greeted
the crawdads that cling to the reeds.
We’ve wrestled and tussled
and dunked and dried and now
we lie on our backs and glide
in the late August sun
and warmth seeps into our skin.
She tells me stories, and my eyes are closed,
and I think, This is why I am alive.
And if the moment is somehow made sweeter
because we’ve been intimate with death,
that is something seen only in retrospect.
In the moment, we are sunbeam and story
and the tickle of damselflies
that land on our skin. We are the aimless drift
from light to light.