As I left the boathouse, from a work meeting,
a pack of ten-year olds there with their class ran past me in lifejackets
one shouting with gusto “I regret everything!”
I could tell that he meant
that he did, and he didn’t.
Accept it all
and writhe with it.
The day so hot, my shirt clung to me,
ideas that had seemed to have such force
from my tongue, now evaporating.
How do we manage to live with ourselves
year after year?
Plummeting like pelicans
in that way that only pelicans do—
trying to pretend that nobody sees us:
inelegant, getting it,
surfacing,
obvious.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 22, Issue 2.
Nina Lindsay is the author of two collections of poetry, Because and Today’s Special Dish, from Sixteen Rivers Press. Her poems have appeared in the Colorado Review, Fence, the Kenyon Review, Mudlark, Prairie Schooner, Third Coast, and other journals. Nina lives and works in Oakland CA.
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