Christmas in Noah’s Ark

For years, the red canoe sat idle on its port side in the bottomland between Sexton Creek and the single-wide trailer where a friend of mine, Joe, lived with his wife. The creek’s uncertain waters were usually no more than a few inches deep, far too shallow to float the thing. The weather had been chipping away at its bones for so long that the vessel’s fitness for water was a matter of speculation. It seemed to me bound to the shore, without passengers and without a destination.