Lake Champlain

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Lake Champlain

By Lyn Lifshin

We could hear Louis Armstrong
if the wind blew right.
Across the lake, we
listened to the baby

sitter's stories
of what they did to children
in Germany in the tunnels,
my mother's cigarette, a

firefly on the porch across
the dark jade grass, a
night light. I imagined
hair straight as the

girl at the rink with
one green eye, one blue
one, her gaze hypnotic
as the stories of what

people might do. I

didn't know what
might uncoil in the night.
Or that, though I felt

I was storing up sun,
catching light like
minnows, in the fall
ahead there wouldn't
be one night I didn't

wake up screaming
in dreams of fire