Today I brought my mother the lake
she gave me when I was eight—

she and my father moving us north
from all we knew to start over

in water that was new to us all.
Skipping down the path across

the road on the hottest summer days,
lake-bound, flip-flopped, pony-tailed,

my sister and I ready to plunge in or,
after Dad got home, taking the boat out

to ski into a rosy sky, coming in before
it got dark. Today I walked the path alone,

mindful of the wall of poison oak on either side,
trefoil green like our Girl Scout uniforms,

surveying the nearly full lake, a fledgling
generation of boaters and families

hugging its shores. And on the way back
picking up a fresh quill left by a passing

goose and a chunk of quartz that glinted up
at my mother when I returned to the house

where she raised me, watching her smile
as I put the rock into her open palm, hearing

her exclaim, “So sparkly!”