Laid back over oarlocks,
arms akimbo, hat slouched;
slow riding the Loire.
The river pushes
into a bobbing place
a sylvian picnic
where female bottoms convene
in soft repose.
Iridescent thuds, a thrashing of fins.
A large trout flops in the gunnels.
Wide lips, mouthing Gallic obscenities;
the rainbow splashing
of a disgruntled fish.
The rowboat rolls, rights and recovers.
Upon the shore
bottoms rise like plump geese
from green lawns.
The fish sneers,
flips a glowing Gauloises
between thick lips.
Full-figured forms rise
to watch the watery fuss
then shrug
as more wine is poured.
The trout jumps into the river.
Parasols open and twirl.
We all smile behind our hands
as Renoir paints on.
I don't need mawkish photographs to see
the drowning rowboat tethered to the dock,
a withered seahorse clinging to debris
as umber water seeps through feeble caulk.
The cord grass will have grown up through the planks
to marry splinters teeming on the pier,
putrescent pillars tilted by the banks;
a pallid corpse beside the marsh's bier.
Those summers when we sailed through brackish mist
have long since gone the way of floating sculls
that languish in the asters to be kissed
by empty oarlocks perched atop their hulls.
Your August ghost still flounders on the fen
then sinks beneath in nightmares now as then.
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