We had lain beneath juniper and pitch-pine
and let that steamer pass us
Giggling as the slower passengers boarded
Staying to firmly hold that island soil
and the cool rush of its grasses.
And the river itself seemed shy of us.
It grew calm as if waiting.

Yet more than time and the survey of it,
All things we wanted to be let alone that day.
Joyous yes, enraptured, reason undivided.
Emanating from this tree, that tree,
not less than any particular or imagined tree.

A forest grove of three-hour democracies.

I had a dream, your moonlit face
appeared as a chestnut,
and attached to home and hearth,
surrounded by the fox,
frog and snake, we guarded a terrible secret.
Only your wiliness saved us from angry neighbors.

But waking I felt the touch of a storm coming on.
Had we not walked softly enough?
The moon had set or been turned about
over that trust-built island.
Deluged in the rain we thought not to storm,
we could not see for the bended river,
foggy, our disappearance.

When we kissed defying the storm
The satisfactory giggle of the rain
seeped through branches.
Our feet solidly on needles, not the ground or nymph,
but the shameless touch of you in contrast.

You threw your head back
as rain dribbled across your forehead.
Agape, your mouth outlined the river.
You did not allow for sorrow in your limbs,
Or obey,
You moved clamors of assent,
inconceivable options moved in my arms and legs.
I met you with an open mind, and you reached me,
describing the many courses that web unhindered
and the forest's expanse just inside a man,
that very thing in a chill of death
that smiles reverently.

Many years later I remembered the fish of the river
and the quickness of your youth
as I toured a local bookshop.

Leafing through the pages of a volume
I saw "The Cecropia Helmet" by Paul Cadmus,
and further on Virgil's shepherds,
Whitman's latter roaming in the toilsome woods,
Thornycroft's sculpture "The Mower."
It was then I understood, as an older man would,
that turned about and love-spent
beneath such an outdated bower
--could we but expect to find our Bog?