THE PHOTOGRAPH, COVE POINT

by Lyn Lifshin

one e mail suddenly with
its vintage camp, ramshackle
hall. You can only read some
of the signs like BEER,
DANCING. Only a few cars
and the lake behind it. “I
was googling Cove Point,
someone e mails me, and
I found your poem.” He’s got
a Lake Dunmore address.
The lake so braided with
all my summers. My mother
making salmon croquettes for
picnics when the store closed
and me in my bath suit posed
like a pin up near Branbury
Beach when, though I didn’t
know it, couldn’t believe
it, my body was beautiful. The
bathing suit, light blue with
a tiny skirt maybe still in a
drawer in another house.
July nights, square dancing
at Cove Point, Pinkie Lee
and his Mocking Bird song
with it’s “kiss her in the
center if you dare.” Maybe
this man who’s written
me asked me to dance once
before flames licked the
old rafters. Now there isn’t
a clue. Lake grass reclaimed
all traces of the foundation.
But I remember on the last
night before he went to Cuba,
the first boy with licorice
eyes and mahogany hair,
a prototype for all the other
tall dark men I’d look and
long for, held me in the
parked car, put his hand where
no one else had yet, promising
love tho it would be the
next to last time I saw him


*Lyn's website: http://www.lynlifshin.com/books.htm