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Escanaba River
by Gary Beaumier
In dreams my father skates
the Escanaba River.
The ice hard frozen and dusted
with snow that swirls
ghostly behind him
as he flies breakneck
toward a sundown
that sets the pine and birch on fire.
He’s lean in that way teens are,
tugging his hat over
a thicket of black hair --
earflaps up, daring the cold.
Blades bite the ice as he sways
into a rhythm of greater speed
until he pivots and backward
glides in a lazy “S”.
This was his glory!
There are days when
I superimpose myself in this past --
momentarily I become the lord of time,
the curator of some
cataract memory –
and there he is,
largely unformed,
neither father nor husband.
As I meet him this way,
our checkered
relationship and
estrangement
is yet to be.
So we walk companionably
to my grandparents’
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