Fundy's Echo Read online

  “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!"

  The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,

  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”)