“You’re the tripper…trip, young man!”
Then I saw it.
It was yellow.
(They had told me white with green.)
And the dock was twice as long
As the last tripper here had seen.
And a lull
Inside the inlet,
Past the sheltering granite bluff,
Told each straining Hiawatha,
We would make camp soon enough.
And the stream
Now took to narrowing.
Stately pines right to the edge.
A barrage of bluejay banter,
And a weasel on a ledge.
With the late day’s
Sunshine angled,
Welcome silhouettes in shade.
Black-green fingers now caressing
Water lilies, gold inlaid.
And the flipping
Of a gar- pike
At a droning dragonfly.
And the Sun-God peeking through the pines.
A banquet to the eye.
And the creaking
Of the mesh seats,
And the dribbling of each blade,
And the knocking of the gunwales,
Music Champlain might have made.
Then a bending
Of the river.
And a sudden gurgling sound.
And an intersecting,
Sparkling cataract was found.
And across from it
A sand beach,
Clean and soft without a stone.
And an uphill mossy clearing.
“Girls, our temporary home!”
Quick the tents and
Knapsacks tossed out.
Quick the small craft pulled ashore.
Quick the centre-poles and guy-wires.
Quick the smoothing of the floor.
Here at last
Our one-night haven.
First the swim and then the feast.
And the growing sense of teamwork
From the ablest to the least.
After clean-up,
Crackling campfire.
And the night sky for a roof.
And the basso of the bullfrog.
And the happy songs of youth.
Doug Blair
Gunwale Rocking
The cedar-strip canoe
Feels comfortable
As I push away from our dock
Facing gentle Bay wind.
Busy day today
With the kids.
This session of camp
Seems spunkier.
Good evening program.
Young boys actually sang.
Read a little Service
Some north-wood rhyme.
Sunset out there
Beyond the point.
One of a kind
With fire.
Cabin line has settled
Rattlings subside.
Mosquitoes and peeper frogs
Bring night's music.
Gentle J-stroke
Makes relaxed progress
With tickling resistance
Of evening's waves.
Rounding the point,
Marsh grass and lilies
Welcome.
Last vestiges of light.
There. Enough.
Paddle placed
Cross gunwales behind.
Stretching out and back.
Legs extended
Five and seven o'clock.
Feeling the rock
Of the craft.
Night-lights, lazy,
Arrive above.
Wink, shimmer, shoot.
Special August friends.
From shoreline
Raven's croak echoes.
And bullfrog's tympanic
Tryst.
Rocking, rocking,
Turning.
North star dances
'Round.
Seldom have I
Relished.
Such freedom from
The ground.
Doug Blair
An Earlier Titanic
(Taken from The Wreck of the Hesperus)
Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds
That ope in the month of May.
The skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his mouth,
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now West, now South.
Then up and spake an old sailor,
Had sailed to the Spanish Main,
"I pray thee, put into yonder port,
For I fear a hurricane.
"Last night, the moon had a golden ring,
And tonight no moon we see!"
And a scornful laugh laughed he.
Colder and louder blew the wind,
A gale from the Northeast,
The snow fell hissing in the brine,
And the billows frothed like yeast.
Down came the storm, and smote amain,
The vessel in its strength:
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
Then leaped her cable's length.
"Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,
And do not tremble so:
For I can weather the roughest gale,
That ever wind did blow."
He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat
Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound her to the mast.
"O father! I hear the church-bells ring,
O say, what may it be?"
"Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!"-
And he steered for the open sea.
"O father! I hear the sound of guns,
O say, what may it be?"
"Some ship in distress, that cannot live
In such an angry sea!" …
The Fire of Driftwood
We sat within the farm-house old,
Whose windows, looking o’er the bay,
Gave to the sea-breeze damp and cold,
An easy entrance, night and day.
Not far away we saw the port,
The strange, old-fashioned, silent town,
The lighthouse, the dismantled fort,
The wooden houses, quaint and brown.
We sat and talked until the night,
Descending, filled the little room;
Our faces faded from the sight,
Our voices only broke the gloom.
We spake of many a vanished scene,
Of what we once had thought and said,
Of what had been, and might have been,
And who was changed, and who was dead;
And all that fills the hearts of friends,
When first they feel, with secret pain,
Their lives thenceforth have separate ends,
And never can be one again;
The first slight swerving of the heart,
That words are powerless to express,
And leave it still unsaid in part,
Or say it in too great excess.
The very tones in which we spake
Had something strange, I could but mark;
The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.
Oft died the words upon our lips,
As suddenly, from out the fire
Built of the wreck of stranded ships,
The flames would leap and then expire.
And, as their splendor flashed and failed,
We thought of wrecks upon the main,
Of ships dismasted, that were hailed
And sent no answer back again.
The windows, rattling in their frames,
The ocean, roaring up the beach,
The gusty blast, the bickering flames,
All mingled vaguely in our speech;
Until they made themselves a part
Of fancies floating through the brain,
The long-lost ventures of the heart,
That send no answers back again.
O flames that glowed! O hearts that yearned!
They were indeed too much akin,
The drift-wood fire without that burned,
The thoughts that burned and glowed within.
The Day is Done
THE day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.
I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me
That my soul cannot resist:
A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.
Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.
Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time,
For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
And tonight I long for rest.
Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;
Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.
Such songs have a power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And comes like the benediction
That follows after prayer.
Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.
And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
(Painting by Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, “Arab Tent”)