Late Summer Loons

At Little Long Pond, loons paddle and preen, roll and flap. My teen daughter and I scan the water for mother and baby, our daily seek-and-find game.  

In July, baby is black and fluffy, tucked into the plumage of mother’s back. In August, baby is brown and elongated, gliding at the tip of mother’s tail feathers.  

Some days, mother’s beak tremors in staccato warbling. Others, her bellowing wail haunts the entire pond, echoing off the granite shore, so weighted by longing it could be her final attempt to connect with something beyond this realm.  

Today, she’s a black torpedo between the water’s surface and pond floor grasses. Sleek, wings tucked tight, she bullets toward a catch while baby waits above. But just before she breaks the surface to serve the silver fish, baby dives below. When mother rises, her neck jerks side to side. Fearful red eyes dart.  

Omniscient on the shore, we say, “Don’t fret! He’s practicing! He’ll come up!”  

“Just like the zoo,” I say, knowing my daughter can’t forget the day we were separated when she was four. What I don’t say is how, as I torpedoed past the animal exhibits, past kids casually holding mothers’ hands—none of them mine, none of them mine—I wailed across eternity that I had already buried one baby and could not survive losing another. How I begged like a child. Don’t. Please. Take anything else. Anything. 

Baby loon pops up.  

We breathe again. For this moment, the universe is loving and perfect. Mother slips the glinting fish into baby’s beak. 

Erin Wood’s work can be found in The Sun, Brevity, and HuffPost Personal, and has been named Notable in The Best American Essays series. She is author of Women Make Arkansas: Conversations with 50 Creatives and editor of Scars: An Anthology. Erin is working on an essay collection, for which she received grant support as a Mid-America Arts Alliance 2025 Catalyze Fellow. She owns and runs Et Alia Press in Little Rock. Find her at erinwood.com and etaliapress.com.      

This essay is a Short Reads original.