My Teenagers, Afternoon at Lake Roland

The Falls Road northern light is fading gray:

a sudden snowfall sweeps us eastward like

a curtain rising at the driveway to the lake.

I stop my car beside the bridge and hike out to

the day's

last scene which stars my strong and happy sons

fast racing up along the graveled path

each to test the measure of his breath

and call his sister, "Here, come see, I've won."

She, beside me walking with her secret joys,

motions her two gloved hands airborne

toward a stick out on the lake beyond the boys,

a dark branch balanced at the dam's ledge,

in the roar

and plunging of that river on whose cascade

into noise

it seems to hesitate, poised there at the edge

of more.