Evanescence

We zigzagged like satyrs through the pines
to where a great blue heron
would be mining silver minnows

from the shoal, flung tee shirts
and khakis across branches till the bank
was a launderette of willows.

We were summer fixtures there,
sun-burnished bathers of a pastoral painting,
shuddering the desperate breathing of sex

as we attuned ourselves
with the water's virgin chill.
Even back then, the pond had begun silting up,

thickening with twigs and leaves.
In no time, it seems, nothing was left
but our dry bed of memories,

the countdown of which boys remain,
and somewhere at the back of our splurging,
that knowledge of Eden changing.

Copyright © 2004 Claude Wilkinson All rights reserved
from Fresh Water: Poems From the Rivers, Lakes, and Streams
Pudding House Publications
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission