Potomac Summer

I was walking with the dead today,
Like every day,
And hearing their stories from another living man.
He told me of his mother,
Who taught him to brave the river,
To love and fear the river,
And come home safe at end of day.

He told me of his brother,
Who was also my father,
And how the two of them would shove off down
The all-consuming river,
The cold and boiling river,
The life-death-dealing river,
Where men are made and drowned.
With boyish love they beat the water,
Cleaving and churning, solemn in joy,
Flowing like blood, singing like water,
All down the long blank summer of their youth.

The younger brother died too young.
The older brother is older now.
The river is the same, hungry and surging,
Full of dreams and flotsam
And a thousand summer boys.

We walk with the dead, Tom and I, beside the river.
We remember them to life.
We remember ourselves.