wooden bench

I’m sitting on a wooden bench.

This bench is on the outskirts of a small town along a coast.

Somewhere away.

From this bench I can see many things.

A bending road alongside the sea.

Some fisherman’s huts thinly on a shore. Some old boats. Worn equipment.

A few brightly wishy-washy houses. Dated and new.

Some backyards. Some open windows.

A couple deer are between the homes. In the tall flowing grass.

Above are seagulls. Some crows. A hawk.

In the distance are pale waves. Bleached clouds.

There is a background of blue.

A warm sidelong sun.

Sitting there on the wooden bench, I get a feeling:

0f a lake I went to over many summers back home.

A cabin just on the edge of the water. A beautiful place.

In the evening, my friends and I put rocks in the fire pit to heat. Hot rocks for a sauna in the coming night.

The sauna is a small lightless wooden box. Inside is a square hole in the floor to place the warm stones. The stones sitting in metal buckets. Green watering cans filled to pour. Everything dim except for the red glow at our feet.

Every time we have a sauna, we say it has been hotter. But it is always hot. Clinging ash from the fire pit spits into the air as the water hits the rocks. Heat rises and curls down from the roof, hurting sunburns on shoulders.

After the sauna, everyone runs off the dock and jumps into the lake under the stars.

In the dark, we swim.

And we submerge our heads at least three times in the cold water. Or else we might get sick from the heat. It’s a rule. One of the many ways of things there.

Small customs. Bound in feelings. Ingrained in senses.

And I remember how it feels, sitting on the wooden benches of the hand-built sauna.

I remember standing in the water in the night. The water like ink beneath the black sky.

There are one or two lights on across the far shore.

In the quiet moments, we might hear a loon call out.

But I am sitting on a wooden bench far away from home.

I can see many things out in the distance.

Waves and blue sky. Seagulls, crows, and a hawk. Deer. Pastel houses and their backyards. Open windows.

I think it’s funny how many things out in the distance can probably see me too.

If they had a mind to look.

And the sun is really quite nice.

I close my eyes and sit for a while longer.

The wood of the bench bringing me to a memory thousands of kilometers away.