Too early for campers, canoers to arrive,
the sun squeezing between trees;
the air is bare-leg cool, the water is flat,
though the earth tilts toward summer.
 
The Civilian Conservation Corps
built the earthen dam, the log and stone 
bathhouse in the desperate Thirties. 
We pause at the bronze plaque every year
as a teaching moment before we find
our picnic spot under the oaks.
 
Our elder granddaughter stands 
on the beach after a year’s absence,
says the island looks bigger, closer.
Her younger sister prints her footprints
in smooth sand. Their cousin adjusts
his goggles against the soon-to-be murk:
all in their innocence.
 
Braving the cold mountain depths,
their joy is immediate.
They tease the Marco Polo tease,
chase minnows in the shallows,
and swim passed the buoy line to the island.
They wave to us. Apprehensive, vigilant,
we return their offer of confidence.
 
They may reference this tradition
in college graduation speeches,
how it is possible for a nation
to take care of its citizens,
how promises to the future must be kept.
                        

Do nothing by tides, the local salt said,
as if a philosophical joke, having served it
to every tourist handing him a few dollars.
Patiently, I wait in line for his ‘hand-roasted’ coffee
as valuable as first light just before sunrise.
 
Deck-perched, I read them in paperback—
black letters are wrack lines on sand-colored paper. 
I meet the poet as he may not have wanted.
From his randy youth, his passionate prayers
here sonnetized; doubt is seeded in his guilt and grief. 
Can I empathize without being a true believer?
 
The assault of sun pings on my balding
like the pebbles some angel ticks against
the window pane. Do these visitations beckon me? 
Done-in by midmorning heat, my head burns
as if to prove a point. There is no epiphany in the glare.
 
I retreat into the pastel rental cottage, where generic 
seascapes hang, where the coolness of the ceiling fan
like the shade of a tree is all the message, the literal relief, I need.