Dying in Water

Flat, the August lake rests placid in mid-day,

And clover blooms above the shallow, pebbled shores,

Slow summer heat bursts scent from purple orbs

Nodding in the season’s long and waning close.

Boys swim and toss their words in splashing play,

Daring one another to swim the gentle waters,

They know the cool that rushes from the sandy bottom,

They’ve come here all their lives,

They know the contours of the shore,

They are seventeen and just begun,

They have no fears, no thoughts of mortal

Being, no worries in the languid sunny moments.

And so they swim, lean arms curving through silver droplets

As each turns his head in rhythmic breathing, legs pushing

Through the water, each thoughtless as their bodies

Slide silken through the center's depth.

One tires in the middle, and turning back to green pines

Above the clover, somehow his effort falters, some

How his effort falters, the boy slips once and

Slips again as friends grow small in steady reaching of

The other waiting side, the far shore he too sought.

He drowned in the summer of his only just beginning,

Just seventeen, just swimming in the lake.