Fallen Leaf Lake

(for JKM, 7-7-84)

Now in our thirty-fourth summer
We come childless to the Bassett Cabin:
To dip our thickened frames in the Lake
As if to slake old puritan aches;
Could witch's water been colder,
More purifying than this noble Lake?

Bill's boat skims over the snow-fed
Water, clear to the secret bottom,
As steady goes our prow
Like Susan's crayon to draw the shore,
Setting it now once more
In memory's bank -- our Fallen Leaf,
Against the winter's lack
When the Big Dipper's dimmed
By the Bay's ruinous light.

At dusk we watch the Falls
Which feed so well our Lake,
Its fish, its ducks and ducklings,
Its continuous, Wordsworthian roar,
Reducing the Ski-Nautique
To puny mosquito-power.

Sated with spray, we stop
At St. Francis of the Mountains,
Bonnie and Marvin's place,
Beflowered in Columbine and Queen Anne's Lace,
To read in brass again the names who died in war --
Allen, Bassett, Brett, Canning, Culver, Etcheverry,
The words: "They will not grow old"
And we make bold to add our names
To those who also cannot leave this Lake.

[Poem by Virginia McKinnon Mann, presumably written in July, 1984. Photo by Steve Jurvetson.]