Cherish

“And what did you want? To call myself beloved,
to feel myself beloved on the earth.” ~ Raymond Carver

He wrote to her on Biggar Lake and in his notebook
drew canoes from the island threading across
the page of sky which expanded and
unburdened him and when he leapt in naked
and swam it surrounded him in the borderless ways
in which the body of water held the island open
on its palm, so freely he imagined it embracing
the wind in order to move away from shore,
and to shed its own light.