Epiphanless
by Jim Gustafson
I’ve never had an epiphany, though I remember
the first time I felt small. At fifteen on a northern lake
drifting alone at night in an aluminum rowboat,
I looked up to the scattered salt of stars, in a sky
so close its soft hands reached out to rock the boat.
Night wanted to chill the air, as the last of summer
threw fruitless punches at autumn.
I’d spent my days in the same boat. I soaked in the sun,
listened to loons, and let The Catcher in the Rye
teach me things the night sky would not tell,
or did not know, about what it means
to float between seasons, and how the world
we ride together has different windows, and how
even bull frogs take the dark we share for granted.
Photo by Evgeni Tcherkasski.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Upon seeing the ONE GOOD MEMORY prompt, this poem immediately came to mind. It was originally published in my collection Unassisted Living (Big Table Press, 2017).
PHOTO: The author in his aluminum rowboat (Butternut Lake, Wisconsin, 1965).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jim Gustafson is the author of three books of poetry: Friar Fred’s Diary (Big Table Press, 2018), Unassisted Living (Big Table Press, 2017), Driving Home (Aldrich Press, 2013), and When we’ve come farther than we have to go (Big Table Press, 2022). He holds an M. Div. from Garrett Theological Seminary at Northwestern University and an MFA from the University of Tampa. He has retired from teaching Creative Writing at Florida Gulf Coast University. Jim and his wife, Connie, live in Fort Myers, Florida, where he reads, writes, teaches, and pulls weeds. Visit him at jimgustafson.com.
Silver Birch Press 