OVER THE SUMMER WATER

Summer distances do not alarm
When water fills them;
The eye drinks, feels no harm,
Rinses, and spills them,
While the heart, little red canoe,
Over the resonant river races,
Calling Darling! Clementine! Lou!
O Boy in the boater and braces!

Summer people, like daguerreotypes, don’t fade;
They are watermarked, and that is that—
Professor and Mrs. Pew on the Esplanade,
Old Mrs. Ferris’s hat. . .
The Fat Boy. . . the Twins. . . the Sophomore. . . the Beaux. . .
The Belles in their bright boating dresses—
Memory wears retrospective clothes,
Slim waists, and (preferably) long tresses.

Summer quivers over the water on a banjo ping,
Is magnified, and roars to shore;
A myriad lost voices in community sing
O my Darling! O Clementine!  No more. . .
For water is ghost-freighted with memory;
It widens in rings beyond telling
Where time’s old excursioners go down to sea,
Their scarves and their bannerets swelling.