© 2012 Kevin Gillam

the golden mean

my father, eighty years ago, at the age of —
my guess — seven — was driven

with classmates in a bus on a
stifling hot February day to a Wagin salt lake,

marched to jetty end, and thrown in.
my father never talked about the ease of floating,

how their bodies formed spoons on the surface in the
spangled light, how tepid brine burned

at lips and scabbed knees, never told us
how a girl screamed when her foot found a sheep's skull,

how three ducks watched from near the reeds, how the absence
of showers left them all with hair like dolls.

he did talk about the golden mean, ratio of weight to air,
that day, his first lesson in flight