She is there at the water’s edge Most any day she can wheedle and whine her mother to the water, From the intermittent teasing warmth of late March And all through the languid North Country summer Until such time she is there, Mitten-clad and scarf-wrapped like some miniature Tut, Bracing against January’s razor-blade winds in those last few days Until the few gurgling rills and streamlets are nothing but ice All the way up to the big river in Ogdensburg. She scrambles down to the bridge abutment Hard by the Riverside Cemetery Dropping a Popsicle-stick craft (Its sails snips of cloth or bits of green-bar paper, Its cargo a message stapled into a sandwich bag) Into the river, sent on its way With a brief and whispered benediction. Most times, the craft founders almost immediately, Taken under by a sudden gust of wind or large stick Perhaps a carelessly tossed forty-ounce Hamm’s empty, But on occasion the boat will stay upright and precariously totter along Until it slips out of sight past the bend near the hospital, And she claps her hands, convinced that yet another one Is on its way to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the great blue ocean. An onlooker might cluck and shake his head, And tell her that such a toy Would never make it outside the village limits, Certainly never past the big bridge on Route 58 at Elmdale Or the one further on up past Pope Mills, Let alone to the Seaway, But he might check himself, perhaps sensing That there had been disenchantment For one life already, So he might instead make gentle inquiries As to what messages are carried in the plastic baggies. She would (her voice all mock-sterness though the eyes betray her) Answer simply That is between me and the angelfish.