Walking the pebbled shore, it’s hard to imagine how 
water once flowed through, then past, this stillwater lake,

how it was once an elbowed course in the Chippewa River,
before the bends in the loop filled with sediment,

and formed the lake that became more a crescent shape
than the half-moon name it aspires to.

Almost as hard to imagine you and I so earnest, 
so many years ago, preening 
in our wool mufflers and gilded corduroy coats,

hormone distracted and nearly in flagrante delicto, and still 
we scoured the lakeshore for smooth stones to skip

across the frozen bay until the cracked lake moaned back to us, 
to us, to the entire college town it seemed – 
echoing like some cavernous mouth harp.

How, after the snow came, we skipped ourselves across the lake,
rumbling down a chute, two-on-a-toboggan,

dry snow blinding us, my arms around you, far, 
far, I knew, outside my normal reach.

Mike Forecki  divides his time between the bluffs overlooking the St. Croix River and Florida’s southern Gulf Coast. For the past 40 years, he has lived and practiced law In Western Wisconsin, and began also practicing poetry when he semi-retired nearly 10 years ago.