Vol. 3, No. 1: Rainbow Curve photo

Long PondSharon A. Foley

I don’t tremble down the hill

but thrill to the clutch of the rough log,

the rail of the stairway Dad has built

seven steps to the concrete

landing with the year 1954 carved in.

The scent of honeysuckle cues me:

watch for the horizon, the first

patch of lake, the pine, distant

on the other side. 

 

Now the narrow beach

rough rocks on the breakwater

that brings the sand in, and beyond

a sailfish splashed by the speedboat

making waves that never reach

 

the shore.  I revel in

the first time of treading water

my breast-stroke toward Dad,

 

relief as our fingertips touch.

Sharon A. Foley has poems published in Nixes Mate Review, Patterson Literary Review, Euphony, Speckled Trout Review, Solstice, South Florida Poetry Journal and The Big Windows Review. She entered the Sisters of Mercy at age eighteen and lived with them as a nun for twenty-nine years. Ms. Foley has a BA in English from Salve Regina College and an MSW from Simmons College. She worked many years as a school social worker and is now a private practice psychotherapist in Attleboro, Massachusetts.