Here is the spot where I once found an adolescent sturgeon
floating tranquil and unperturbed just above the lake floor.
A hoard of little children flocked to me when they heard
my exclamations of awe, they wanted to touch
its moldy spine. I remember wondering to myself
how a fish so small and young could look so old.
This is the place where we came to talk
after my faux pas. I came prepared with a speech,
to apologize and explain, but all I could do was cry
and say “um,” silence, “um,” and you responded
with half a dozen shrugs, squinting against the sun.
Two poets, inarticulate together, in desire and rage.
This is where we came to talk, but instead
we took our clothes off and swam in broad daylight,
just far enough away from the families building sandcastles
and the condos with floor-to-ceiling windows.
We felt invisible to the public eye if we stayed underwater,
but we could see each other, slightly distorted in the waves,
and we could see the mergansers, cormorants, and even a hawk,
or maybe it was a kestrel, so small and sharp.
We walked as far as we could through shallow waters
to where the sand sloped down to a deeper blue,
around the slate cliffs, to a place where we thought
we could be alone. Someone’s always watching—this time
it was a man smoking, fishing, and napping between two boulders.
When I saw him, I covered myself, while you smiled and stretched;
I gained confidence through your gestures.
I know I shouldn’t have said it, I shouldn’t have told you
that I wanted to kiss you, we’ve already been through this.
Ours is a story that fades and resurfaces every season.
Here I am again, alone. The Sagittaria flowers have washed up
on the shore, arrowhead leaves and tendrils in tangled nests,
white blossoms smelling of September rot.
Frances Cannon is a writer, editor, educator, and artist. She is the Mellon Science and Nature Writing Fellow at Kenyon College and is an editorial reader for the Kenyon Review. She is the author and illustrator of several books: Walter Benjamin Reimagined (MIT Press, 2019), The Highs and Lows of Shapeshift Ma and Big-Little Frank (Gold Wake Press, 2017), Tropicalia (Vagabond Press, 2016), Uranian Fruit (Honeybee Press, 2016), Sagittaria, (Bottlecap Press, 2022), Predator/Play (Ethel Zine, 2020), Fling Diction (Green Writers Press, 2024), and Queer Flora, Fauna, Funga (forthcoming with Valiz Press in 2026).
Website: frankyfrancescannon.com
Instagram: @frankyfrancescannon
X: @francesartist