Lear and the Fool, we bob in the water on this fat black doughnut, lolling in the swell on a truck innertube, Obie an orange sausage in his life vest perched on my scorched pink belly, the SENSEI cradled in my crotch. Beside us, motionless in air, the dragonfly's black bead eyes shift under wire screen wings, its turquoise body like an Ohio bluetip match. When in evenings we make our Tivoli tours, dragonflies match the speed of the boat and seem equally motionless until they collide and mate in air and understandably lose velocity. Obie croons the boat’s tune as the breeze blows his hair, but clings to me as the motor ups an octave, the sausage vest making him seem distant and precarious in my arms, while the loons, unbothered by our wake, take up the crooning.
Afterward we wade and pale jade minnows ease in to our toes in shallows, Obie erasing them with a stone plunk.