Lake House
Smell of the cold pine.
Sound of the runners walking up from the lake.
Being a daughter means the world began before you.
Sound of the screen door banging.
Sound of the drowned girl’s sandals on the gravel path.
She isn’t thinking yet of water.
*
February
Out for a walk this afternoon
I saw children playing
their uncomplicated games in snow.
Sunset. The cold comes through
that one cracked-open window
where the curtain holds the fading river light.
Up from the street a man’s thin tenor
sings some half-remembered tune.
I think of you, who will not sing again.
*
Laura Goldin is a publishing lawyer in New York. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Right Hand Pointing, Driftwood, Molecule: A Tiny Lit Mag, Club Plum, Blue Heron Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Bellevue Literary Review, and The Comstock Review.