David Axelrod           Vero Beach            (LD)
A Great Spirit

(Winnipesaukee translates to “smile of the great spirit.”)

The chill of September 
lake water challenges me.
It always takes extra will
power to set my feet down 
blindly feeling soft mud 
squeeze between my toes,
lowering myself as cold 
water reaches my bathing 
suit. The diving raft, twenty 
yards out, was a long swim 
for me at ten. Even now, 
accustomed to ocean’s 
buoyancy, I sink quickly, 
but without the little kid’s 
moment of urgency wishing
for an adult hand to pull
me up. As a little kid, I’d 
make a silly self-dare that I 
could make the swim unaided
and not be some sickly kid. 
From what I learned from 
asthma, struggling for air 
wasn’t a heroic thing. Granted,
my mother used to tell me 
“Someday, you will be better.”
Of course, she meant medically
weller, but the opposite of 
“better” meant I must be bad.
Here I was, returning at 
middle age and I still heard 
echoes taunting me that
it would serve me right 
if I drowned. How long 
before I’d be found in the 
dark water? I heard a fellow
had filled his pockets with rocks 
and when they finally found 
him, fished him out, he was 
blue and bloated. Maybe it was 
all the dark water he swallowed. 
I was the kind of kid who worried 
about what was in the lake water. 
We joked, “Fish piss in it.” Now, 
I know diatoms, not pollution, tint 
the water dark. But the thought 
of a vastly-deep spot still conjures 
wisps of my disappearing. 


Kids know the boogeyman is 
real. He’s the real reason 
people vanish. To be daredevils, 
adults learn to take risks, 
but most kids take unknowing
chances. Panicked by a need 
to live, as a kid I couldn’t, 
as I do now, breaststroke
upward, roll on my back 
for a deep breath, stretch out 
and stroke toward the weathered 
raft lightly rocking as I stroke 
toward it to climb the wood
ladder. Bright sun bakes 
the initial chill away. 
I savor a few minutes 
lying back, eyes closed. I stand
to dive in again, checking
to be sure it’s deep enough to 
leap headfirst without fear 
of a broken neck. Poor Billy
in my grade school who was 
paralyzed for not checking. 
Even then I thought, “Who 
could live like that? Nothing 
you could do? I would rather 
die.” And he did die a dozen 
years later, never again 
shouting, as we kids did, 
“Mommy, watch me.” 


My mother would tell me
that when I reported whatever 
prejudice or cruelty, 
“There’s nothing we 
can do.” Once, when 
a neighbor kid split my
scalp open with a rock, 
my parents couldn’t even 
get his parents to pay for
stitches. Early on, I knew 
things could be worse than 
death. If death took you,
maybe it ended your pain. 


Swimming off the raft, 
no one is close enough 
to save me or even notice 
if I let myself go under 
to drown. I’ve checked in 
to the cabin alone, said nothing 
to a soul except the cabin’s owner 
whom I see is way down shore 
tending to business. 


My parents would bring me 
here for a week-long vacation 
in the foothills of the White 
Mountains. By late summer, 
evenings were already putting 
a chill into the lake. They would 
rent a musty cabin, maybe 
from this same fellow’s dad. 
We’d have a sitting room 
with a kitchen counter, 
two bedrooms with army 
blankets over stiff sheets
on hard mattresses 
suspended on mesh chains. 


Not even enough sand along 
the steep lake shore for a kid 
to fill a pail, scraping with 
a blue plastic shovel. 
Back home, we lived by 
the ocean where there was 
plenty of sand. Why come
here except my folks would 
say, “Let’s get away.” We’d 
pack the Oldsmobile for a long 
ride, with me asking, “Are we 
there yet?” culminating with 
sandwiches for supper, early 
bedtime. For me, nothing to do 
for those vacation days was 
still better than starting school. 
Ma could ignore cooking 
except to slap together 
peanut butter and jelly, 
or boil hotdogs. My Dad 
could take a break from 
wrecker calls and engine 
breakdowns, his skills 
focused on a one-lung 
Evinrude for fishing in 
the center of the lake where 
we caught an occasional 
pickerel. Never anything 
as grand as a bass. A family 
vacation—better than kids 
I pitied whose parents 
sent them off to sleep-over 
camp. At the lake, I’d wheeze 
from ragweed, but I could 
venture out alone, wade 
through primrose though I
did need to be cautious not 
to let it catch my ankles. 
Avoid the bulrush, snap off 
a cattail that could mimic a whip 
or serve as my mock cigar as 
I wondered why life was hard. 
Seventy years later, I’m still 
trying to solve what some
joke is “the mystery of life.”


Maybe it was actually 
hiding all this time with
the great spirit deep in
the dark waters. I decide 
to dive and touch the bottom. 
I twist upward, break the surface, 
scissor kick. Far less gasping 
and drama than when I was barely 
able to make it on my own. 
Again, I climb up, tuck my toes 
over the edge, do an acceptable 
arc into cold water. I frog 
kick back to the ladder
to climb up again, letting 
eddies run down my sides, 
trickle on my inner thighs 
like a kid who has peed his 
bathing suit. “A fish will 
bite you there,” we’d laugh 
skinny dipping in a secluded 
spot near my home. And now, 
just me nearly eighty in an old 
bathing suit. But why wear 
anything at all? Okay, the law, 
or mischievous fish who’d 
yank at me. Better wear this 
suit to cover what parts are 
left of me though I’m equally
used up, blanched by too many 
immersions. Still, I’m able to 
cinch myself up on an exquisite 
day. I remember when a friend 
and I, building our own scrap-
wood raft, were nailing boards. 
I hit my finger and the pain 
was exquisite. I’d heard that 
term “exquisite,” for first 
time at a matinee. A cowboy
said it. “Are you okay?” my 
friend asked over my hollering 
after I hit my finger. And I 
had to say it, though he had 
no idea what I meant: “The pain 
is exquisite,” but it sure took
a long time before the aching 
stopped. Later, a big, blood 
blister. But the nail grew back. 


I’ve come back to Winnipesaukee
looking for signs the way 
fortune tellers in ancient times 
read augurs. An eagle rises from 
pitch pines, slowly circles 
the shore eying a rabbit. It’s 
not a water fowl, doesn’t dive 
or alight on water. I’m neither 
osprey nor eagle—more likely 
to duck than attack. I’m losing 
height and weight, figuring 
when and where to alight. 
Hundreds of years of people 
have swum here. How many 
drownings, miscalculations, 
“I can swim from here to there.” 
Or sudden seizures, lost
below the surface. There were,
certainly, people who stroked 
far enough out to assure 
their own death. Then, 
there were also the winter
cracks on thin ice with 
too-late hands pulling up 
hypothermic, blue faces. 


An afternoon-soft breeze has 
quickened to an imminent 
thunderstorm. I’ve known 
those so true to their faith 
or so heavily armed by habits 
that they don’t heed danger,
or simply can’t shift plans
or change direction. I dive 
toward the shore where I drape 
a rough towel over my shoulders--
same as the cabins always had 
only it covered more of me 
when I was ten. I make it
inside the cabin just as large 
drops let loose with a lightning 
flash. I count—one thousand 
one, one thousand two, one 
thousand three. A boom. 
I calculate the lightning 
is a half mile away. 
This old cabin, with its wide 
boards nailed to true timber— 
full 2 x 4s—will protect me 
though it’s uninsulated. 
I’ve rented it for one night. 
Time enough if I swim out 
and simply sink. Instead, 
I pull off my bathing suit, 
rinse off in lukewarm water. 
I treat myself to a second, 
clean towel, pull up my 
worn chinos. 


Once, I was a sickly kid who
actually made it all the way 
out alone, but hoping someone
would notice me. If my Ma 
were there as I perched to dive,
I’d be crying, “Watch me.”
Now, I see the brown water 
thrashing the shore. Whitecaps 
rise as the louder, more-rapid 
thunder approaches. I could 
rush out heedless, sink 
or swim. I sit by a partly-
opened window to let 
a wet wind blow in. 
The fierceness of the storm 
passes me by. I’m okay--
for a fact, I’m serviceable,
and still very much alive.