The autumn I tumbled down that lakeside,

flaking up a hill of lava leaves in my wake,

my uncle’s motor boat had been roped

to a sort-of stillness, the floating dock

reined and returned to the ugly umber bank,

a shame beside my remembered coast, the near-sugar

shade of copra

                        —I never lost my footing

when the neighbour’s labrador ghosted into view,

a black blur between the maples

so crowded their canopy allowed only portions

of Georgia’s sun upon the orange—

                                                        frightened

by the first bark, a baritone glock, I didn’t trip

just then, but turned on purpose, my towel

sloughed-off like the leaves bereaving that hill.

All these ages, my story was the suddenness

slipped me back, made me free roll down

to the sand I slandered like crazy, my limbs

and elsewhere flayed by friction, two great

herons at the mezzanine point of the slope

startled, preparing their wings and wincing.

The truth is that I aimed on instinct toward

the shoreline, then moved automatic

like the mother and son in one of Senior’s

Hurricane Stories, who saw reunion in the water

so walked to meet each other, continents

apart—

             I moved myself like it was written

somewhere that danger feared the shallows,

would not follow me there where

the water wore its mossy skirt and sloshed

as I soared some metres from the ledge

into landing, toe-first into the brown beach

and the leg in question crumpling—

                                                      if it pleases

the reader, hold me there, in midair,

a pause to prep my life for limping,

the chronic knee nuisance, help me untwist

the Aboniki balm, the mutt of that moment

long since put down, pursuing me still

up each stairway, through the varied aisles

and every lawn I’ve let wild—

                                               or rewind

my steps from fracture back to laughter

on the dock, do away with the grounding,

the moans I’d made to summon cousins

from the cabin, when, crippled, I caught

the small felt waves and let them in.

They flowed over the bone jooking out

my blood-shined shin, nudging the leaks like love.