February 16, 2013

•  

   

   

   

  The Summer Camp   -  Repost 

   

  Coming as it did from woods behind his house

  The light is unexplained - A first in all these years

  A splash of ray now here now there

  It flits among thick trunks and spiky scrub - Unwanted and unknown

  It cleaves the blackness with its fear

   

  He could not say what stirs him from a fitful sleep to look outside

  He waits disoriented - shotgun at the ready in his hands

  Watching with soundless breath to see who dares

  To sidle to his rear perimeter unwatched since he beached himself

  So long ago upon this island land

   

  These barrier woods became his keep-away construct

  The barbed impassable remains of violent squalls

  A wall of smashed uprooted trees shot through as now

  With struggling sun-starved growths - Stacked to an impenetrable mass

  Of ancient and invulnerable falls

   

  This sinister light is not from flash - Rather a soft ochre fire

  Cast by a lantern or perhaps a tallow torch

  The whispered hisses and faint grunts he thinks he hears reflect a distant age

  Dissimilar rasp upon his nerves as dim etherials float by

  Portaging just past reproach

   

  These travelers have taken almost a completed moon

  From the sierras of the upper River of the Dead

  Its ice unbroken still but softened now by higher sun

  The fishers slip their way and slide their slender craft

  To a lower and much rougher river run with mud

   

  Unfettered country opens as they ply the Kennebec

  Its cataracts and spates replete with sharded ice

  A family lost to its niagara - They press on

  To branch before they reach the primitive fort

  And gain the ponds and streams beyond the splice

   

  They scent the sea in April's dusk

  And rush to cross to the long island on the moonless tide

  Hard wind forestalls a paddling round to ocean shore

  So with gear lashed within canoes - the apparitions move 

  Through seething woods to pitch their rough reside

   

  They make their camp below his granite parapet

  Among the massive boulders of the gravel beach

  Canoes tipped up above highwater - blankets spread and children tucked

  They rest - The storm roars on but they're impervious of violence

  Beyond the outer reach

   

  Here they will pass warm days drying yellow-tail and cod

  Seawater boiled for salt - next winter's sustenance

  Is smoked and layered tight between drained kelp and birches' peel

  While bronze children splash in gentle surf

  Their mothers tie fish bundles onto sturdy carry-packs

   

  As summer sun climbs higher and the sea is rippled up

  By fresh southwesters that flush mist-colored hues

  Lithe near-naked warriors venture beyond the barrier isles

  Their slim canoes out-rigged to smooth Penobscot chop

  Return with bottoms filled with harpooned blues

   

  All summer the camp pulsates with laughter love and tears

  As nature's children work and play beneath earth's dome 

  And when first frost begins to wilt the wild cucumber vine

  They rake the beach and pack canoes and smother fires

  And paddle back to main to climb the hills to home

   

  The rose of dawn has fired up the eastern sky

  As gulls and cormorants and crows unleash their strident cries

  His reverie is shattered too by the P3 low over the bay

  Its engines throttled back in preparation to touch down

  Tumultuous reality returns as violated vision dies

   

    

   

   

   

   

   

   

  • 10:27 am
  • 3 Comments