Pamela Gemin

WOMEN AND LAKES

When they are girls, their fathers toss them
              off of boats and watch as they sink
and surface, flapping, little bird-fish that they are,

              diminutive mouthspouts raised to suck air.
Whatever animal fear the girls know
              is roughly licked away, by waves or air currents

or songs of gulls crossing sky above them,
              throwing off squawking shadows. Out
on the dock they hum and comb each other's hair,

              catch Jesus spiders, let them go.
Later their boyfriends frown as they pinch the soft
              woman-dough their bikinis cut into, succulent

pillowing swells at their breast tops and thigh tops,
              satiny supple spills of hips not danced or kicked
or starved away. And when they are fullgrown creatures

              they unwrap towels from around their waists
and let them fall, or gingerly slip off their t-shirts
              behind the pines and walk with pride

or shame through the dry sand and broken shell
              that scatters beneath their soles to the damp sand
that takes their footprints, adjusting a sagging strap,

              sucking in a good lunch. The moment their ankles
cut the first ripples, all of their body's water remembers:
              wading into lakes they feel their legs' awful strength,

shiver off waves that rise to their kneecaps,
              crotches, shoulders, the tips of their hair,
feel themselves more and more buoyant, invincible,

              weightless-the way they have always wanted to feel,
entirely received in their now invisible bodies, sinking
              their lovely heads into the clear colorpool of lake.