Recreation Rededication
"I've eaten Italian ice cream. I've cried at the Acropolis."
A fetor drifts through the federal memorial boat launch and waterside recreation area. The reservoir lies skeletal beneath a hazy sun. One more year of suboptimal rainfall and a certain fat stupid fish, moderately endemic, will suffer the loss of another disjunct population. Extirpating it has become a pastime for recreational boaters. The fish needs no protection if it has been wiped off the map.
A cortege of minor politicians follow a major politician, a geriatric senator. Beneath a shaded pavilion, he ascends the podium for some brief remarks, he promises; the cortege take their seats. The senator tells an anecdote, about when he was a more minor politician, a state senator, less married, less divorced, less geriatric. The level of the reservoir was thirty feet higher then, on average.
Decades before, after seeing his mistress, who would, later, become his third and present wife, the senator, not yet a senator, not yet geriatric, went to a dedication of the same boat launch and waterside recreation area, presided over by his mentor, a geriatric senator of a previous generation, whose newly divorced second wife was the then mistress, the future third and present wife, of his protégé. Mention of these details are to be avoided, his staff had cautioned. The subject of ice cream is brought up, of feeding ice cream to the fish of the lake, the common fish and the rare fish, without distinction.
“We all had a great time,” the geriatric senator says, speaking of his mentor, the geriatric senator of a previous generation. “We all had a great time,” he says, speaking of their relationship, “I really can’t tell you how great of a time we all had.” He gestures to his third and present wife, who is not physically present. She is presently on retreat, presently praying, with great emotion, in one of several European microstates; the waning gibbous moon glares through her barred window.
Beneath the shaded pavilion, by the ceremonial and legal power vested in him, the geriatric senator rededicates the boat launch and waterside recreation area to his mentor, the geriatric senator of a previous generation. Soft polite applause follows. A wetlands mitigation and tax rebate plan is announced. Another round of applause follows. Video is posted to various official governmental social media accounts, with transcripts for the visually impaired, resulting in low to mediocre organic reach and engagement.
The sun dips below the parched browning trees, jack pine and pitch pine, which had been, during the term of the previous geriatric senator, situated along the waterside. A single boat traces a counterclockwise pattern, stops, then traces the pattern clockwise. Later, into the night, the waning gibbous moon rises, as it had, hours before, in one of several European microstates. A certain fat stupid fish, moderately endemic, locally rare, surfaces; it glimpses the moon, the boat launch, the deserted pavilion, before diving back in again.
