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Alpenglow

Carol Barrett

When we moved to the high desert, my daughter found
a watery world just blocks away, splashed with Canada geese,
racy ducks. You’re not the first canal I’ve straddled.
The first — Venice, California, named for the city an ocean
beyond, same winding streets, slips of boats. A school friend
introduced me to his mentor, her back porch licking
the canal. We sipped tea there, tracked the moon’s
stations, stories rippling, her view: young people make
way too much of sex. I couldn’t quite embrace that,
drawn to his blond hair, curly beard. He taught me
to see auras, mystery of the canal, light splintering
air, dazzling. But school was out. I headed to a post
deep in Kansas, waited for the return of flow. Years
dallied until my second canal, knocking up a rental house
in Corpus Christi. A church deacon built a ladder down
its wooden parapet. I could ease in for a swim, share
a salty evening with shrimp whenever desire blew through.
You’re my third canal, only one with radiant alpenglow.
Seasons float past. Already three families have moved in
then out next door. At a housewarming, guests roam
our hostess’s quarters. Above the queen bed, hand-
embroidered sign: You’re not the first. Won’t be the last.
Wispy yellow flowers curl around capital letters
like stray locks of hair. There are ways a lover
is like a canal. They glide by like clouds, like longing.

Carol Barrett has published three volumes of poetry, most recently Reading  Wind, and one of creative nonfiction, Pansies.  An NEA Fellow in Poetry, Carol has lived in nine states of the US and in England. She supervises creative dissertation students at Antioch and Saybrook Universities.