A little ditty I wrote—almost like a gesture sketch—as I watched my wife catching the rays in Jasper National Park, one day after our 20th anniversary:

Pyramid Lake,

Jasper National Park

(July 29, 2010; 3:15 p.m.)

Cupped in a bowl

of rust-colored fingers

sun-glazed and cedar-breathed

becalmed by a lake

that can’t make up its mind

if it’s blue or green…

And there’s you, at the end of the dock,

slow-rocked by the intrauterine tide

skin pinkening

in the magnified light

despite my frequent reminders,

the way I fret over

your unchangeable ways.