She wants the family to hike at Lynx Lake. We’re agreeable, pile into a vehicle and park where she instructs: the one patch of shade in a vacant parking lot. We couldn’t be farther from the dock, but we cross hot asphalt to the shore, meander, then follow her lead toward the trees. At the trailhead, my father, whose gait is shaky at best, asks, Isn’t there a bench? He desperately needs to sit, but his wife spits venom. There is no bench. There is no bench. Dad won’t accept a rock or log, but, goaded, toughs it out. Neither one lets us fetch the car. It’s an endurance race, 60 years long, setting tests the other can’t pass. Dad makes it back, then can’t walk for days. And the outing, so perfect in my mother’s mind, becomes another disaster...

adrift 

the family 
under drought-
stricken pines 

fuel for 
a forest fire 

—Third Place Winner in MacQ’s Cheribun Challenge #3

Cynthia Anderson

A California resident for more than 40 years, Cynthia Anderson is the author of 13 poetry collections, most recently The Far Mountain (The Wise Owl Publications, 2024), Arrival (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2023), and Full Circle (Cholla Needles Press, 2022). Her poems appear frequently in journals and anthologies, and her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Cynthia is co-editor of the anthology A Bird Black As the Sun: California Poets on Crows & Ravens (Green Poet Press).

Author’s website: www.cynthiaandersonpoet.com