Wingfoot Lake

By Rita Dove b. 1952 Rita Dove

(Independence Day, 1964)

On her 36th birthday, Thomas had shown her

her first swimming pool. It had been

his favorite color, exactly—just

so much of it, the swimmers’ white arms jutting

into the chevrons of high society.

She had rolled up her window

and told him to drive on, fast.

Now this act of mercy: four daughters

dragging her to their husbands’ company picnic,

white families on one side and them

on the other, unpacking the same

squeeze bottles of Heinz, the same

waxy beef patties and Salem potato chip bags.

So he was dead for the first time

on Fourth of July—ten years ago

had been harder, waiting for something to happen,

and ten years before that, the girls

like young horses eyeing the track.

Last August she stood alone for hours

in front of the T.V. set

as a crow’s wing moved slowly through

the white streets of government.

That brave swimming

scared her, like Joanna saying

Mother, we’re Afro-Americans now!

What did she know about Africa?

Were there lakes like this one

with a rowboat pushed under the pier?

Or Thomas’ Great Mississippi

with its sullen silks? (There was

the Nile but the Nile belonged

to God.) Where she came from

was the past, 12 miles into town

where nobody had locked their back door,

and Goodyear hadn’t begun to dream of a park

under the company symbol, a white foot

sprouting two small wings.

Source: Thomas and Beulah (1986)

Biography

Rita Dove was born in Akron, Ohio in 1952, the daughter of one of the first black chemists in the tire industry. Dove was encouraged to read widely by her parents, and excelled in school. She was named a Presidential Scholar, one of the top one hundred high-school graduates in the country and attended Miami University in Ohio as a National Merit Scholar. After graduating, Dove received a Fulbright to study at the University of . . .

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