Dusk, Summer

A line of geese
ripples across the whole lake
as the sun
stoops to reassemble
its reflection

Each day the same
hue, and the geese – count them,
a hundred at least,
one for each
day of summer

Things like this
please my grandparents.
They point them out to me,
how wonderful
it is to be old,

but the sight of so many
geese shocks me,
like watching the same
grandparents burn
an umbrella for warmth.

They disassembled it
in the fire
that winter
without a furnace,
the frozen lake.

A glimpse of their
frozen lives,
so near spring, summer.
I am afraid to tread far,
the ice could break.

Jacob Oet, age 17
Solon, Ohio

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