In the Water

Institute for Regional Studies, NDSU, Fargo (2101.8.8)

By Pamela Fisher

How strange to read the third-person

description written by unknown hand

about a moment in time I had mislaid,

my friends and I young adults, girls and boys.

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The one of them ... her hand in the water

is I, my arm over the edge of canoe,

trailing in boat’s wake among river waves,

wind ripples, paddle whorls.

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Even more startling, the image:

my fifteen-year-old self, my friends caught

unawares in age-bleached black and white

(though I wore red). My desire

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to always be in the water, even river flood,

chilled and muddy, strewn with broken

branches and swirling detritus,

was rendered on film and archived.

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That afternoon we slipped through the streets of our town

made canals by risen Park River, zigzagged

among trees, skimmed across lawns submerged,

between hedges and houses. On north edge of town

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Leistikow Park looked a temporary lake

with picnic shelter roofs so much like rafts

that we disembarked, rested on thin metal some minutes,

swift, icy waters moving relentlessly east under us

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while we held canoe against current pull,

oblivious to how easily our shelter

could have collapsed and the river

swept us away like so much debris.

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But time accomplished what the river did not,

pulled us away from our hometown,

from sunny afternoon gliding through disaster,

memories of 1979 so long ago.

PAMELA FISHER was born and raised in Grafton, North Dakota. She currently lives in Grand Forks, where she teaches Spanish at a local high school.