August Poem

All in a Dream

I followed the old path to the river
and then along the river
to the place where we hid the raft,
the raft we'd fashioned from fence-pickets
and clothes-line wire and then carefully hid
among the cat-tails, forty years ago.

You'll remember how we'd planned
to take to the river some great day,
fishing from the raft and camping
on islands, dreaming of open water.

The great day never came--
it was only a dream--
but now in my waking thoughts I find the raft,
I tug it out into the stubborn current and climb aboard,
I watch the old blackened derricks of home
slide by in the brilliant morning light,

and I think of you waiting for me
on some island, downstream,
and we
are boys again,

and the sea waits.