Buckroe, After the Season, 1942

Past the fourth cloverleaf, by dwindling roads At last we came into the unleashed wind; The Chesapeake rose to meet us at a dead end Beyond the carnival wheels and gingerbread. Forsaken by summer, the wharf. The oil-green waves Flung yellow foam and sucked at disheveled sand. Small fish stank in the sun, and nervous droves Of cloud hastened their shadows over bay and land. Beyond the NO DUMPING sign in its surf of cans And the rotting boat with nettles to the rails, The horse dung garlanded with jeweling flies And papers blown like a fleet of shipless sails, We pushed into an overworld of wind and light Where sky unfettered ran wild from earth to noon, And the tethered heart broke loose and rose like a kite From sands that borrowed diamonds from the sun. We were empty and pure as shells that air-drenched hour, Heedless as waves that swell at the shore and fall, Pliant as sea-grass, the rapt inheritors Of a land without memory, where tide erases all.