Kayak on the Cobbosse (I Paddle and I Wonder)

By Lou Foust

It happens
As it does, every once in a while
That between episodes of whatever Netflix show I realize I’m
not good enough.
I haven’t helped enough
I haven’t worked enough
I’m not me enough.
And I feel stuck
Because it’s four o’clock,
And what can I do about it now?

So I walk my kayak down to the launch
And with that first strong push out on the water I wonder
How all the fish alive
Escape the sewage and waste we put in the water. I paddle, and I
wonder

As the point of my kayak cuts through the calm, glassy water I wonder
How different has man made this land?
And when did it all happen?
I paddle, and I wonder

As the lilies and the grasses lick the underside of my kayak I wonder
What they would have looked like, all of them, However
many hundreds of years ago
When they might have lived undisturbed.
I paddle, and I wonder

And as the loons pass me by and dive beneath the water
I wonder
How they mourn when their children
Are lost to the rising water.
Do they think there was simply more rain this year?
Or do they rightfully blame man, and call out a hundred curses from the water? I paddle, and I
wonder.

And as I see the launch again, I see birds,
Though I don’t know which ones,
Sitting on the wire
And I think, surely the birds like the wire,
They had nowhere to perch before,
And I stop myself and laugh
Because there were millions more trees, and a billion more branches before man cut
them down to put in the electrical lines
And just because I didn’t get to see it
doesn’t mean that wasn’t what the world was like before me.

As I pull my kayak back up on shore,
I wonder
How the birds feel.
Do they ever feel free?

I wonder.