Recaptured

By LEONARD BACON

It looks like a fishing morning. Want a lift, Cap’n?
Yes, if you’ll carry me a mile or so.
I’m making for the river where much can happen
I wonder at, but know.

Well, climb on, Cap’n. They say walking’s a gift.
They can have it. From Liberty Bridge it’s only a mile
Upstream to the white place where laurels lift.
I’ll get there in a while.

Well, Cap’n, here’s the bridge. Better try a worm,
If those flies of yours won’t take. Tight lines! So long!
Now for the laurels whitening to confirm
Premonition that grows strong!

It’s not the gray hackle dropped by the fallen elm
That counts. It’s hustling water and brownness and brightness,
And the flower avalanche, waiting to overwhelm
The mind in a plunge of whiteness.

Forget the “Queen of the Waters,” or “Beaverkill”!
It will take a delicate cast those pools to span,
Where the stream, unpossessed, is preparing to have her will
Of a river-captured man,

Moving in her power, with his bruit, clumsy and idle,
Scaring black duck, while above the kingfishers quarrel.
With an empty creel, the possessed drifts under the bridal
Blanched cataract of laurel.