Paulie, the house needs painting—flaking off like snake skins—I’ll have to bring someone in
if I ever want to sell—I can handle the small stuff—replace rotting trim boards—

but paint, no, I won’t even touch low VOC—I just have to make the call. Dad
would have brought out the cans the brushes a ladder and said have at it, but I can say no to him
now.

For weeks I’ve been fixing a bug I introduced with my last release— that’s what I do—
write code for a living—I use a keyboard like a typewriter—punch cards, dial phones—all relics.

Friday I took a ride with Jimmy—you remember Jimmy, my old college frat mate?—
you met him that Christmas before when I brought the guys home.

It’s almost July—I’m back on the clear lake—the sun would sear my bald head
(hey, you’d be bald by now too) without this Sheik of Araby hat I swim with—

breast stroke—all I ever mastered. Like a water bug I push the water behind me and thrust.
I’m swimming to a small island in search of ripe berries, but it’s too early for them.

I do all this—walk outside and swim, or look out at the dock slick with rain—from my lake house on an island.
I pulled a Dad—installed windows all across the front—everywhere you
look—

sunlight and lake. Last week I wiped up guacamole splattered like a cartoon pie on the deck—
I’d stepped into a tub of it—guac—a dish not yet popular in the 70s—and I thought of you.

I’ve been thinking of you. Like me you would be almost 60 now and who knows?—with your love of bible and science, maybe a priest or a doctor—you know better than me.

Now it’s July and I can’t help think of you—I count the 41 years to the top of the lookout tower
at the end of the trail in the park a mile from our house—where you gave up that summer

at seventeen—top of your class. After that, shuttered behind closed doors, our parents shunned condolences—bore August.

This month on Didi’s family calendar—our nephew—we have one, you know—happy, agile, photogenic, joke-playing—smiling your smile, a hardball cupped in his palm—

a teenage boy in summer. He looks so much like you—I see the resemblance
in this color Xerox I came across—you and I both still blond, Paulie,

sharing a seat at the back of a boat on what lake was that? Como? twinned in our blue trunks
and shirtless—you, squinting at the camera, my hand on the tiller.