"The rented lakes of my childhood" by Marge Piercy

I remember the lakes of my Michigan

childhood. Here they are called ponds.

Lakes belonged to summer, two-week

vacations that my father was granted by

Westinghouse when we rented some cabin.

Never mind the dishes with spiderweb

cracks, the crooked aluminum sauce

pans, the crusted black frying pans.

Never mind the mattresses shaped

like the letter V. Old jangling springs.

Moldy bathrooms. Low ceilings

that leaked. The lakes were mysteries

of sand and filmy weeds and minnows

flickering through my fingers. I rowed

into freedom. Alone on the water

that freckled into small ripples,

that raised its hackles in storms,

that lay glassy at twilight reflecting

the sunset then sucking up the dark,

I was unobserved as the quiet doe

coming with her fawns to drink

on the opposite shore. I let the row-

boat drift as the current pleased, lying

faceup like a photographer’s plate

the rising moon turned to a ghost.

And though the voices called me

back to the rented space we shared

I was sure I left my real self there-

a tiny black pupil in the immense

eye of a silver pool of silence.

"The rented lakes of my childhood" by Marge Piercy from Made in Detroit. © Knopf, 2015.