"The woods, the stalwart trees, the slender, tapering trees,
The liliput countless armies of the grass…." – Whitman, "Return of the Heroes"







Frautschi Point


Lakeshore path University Bay a rich cold blue –
one boat off the dock at Memorial Union testing divers
and the black coots scuttle off among the bunchgrass
swooping to the chug of the parading April shore.
All to come! All to see! The sail dinghy's stacked
collecting the cold monotony of winter no longer,
Sycamores lapping up the moist rocks tired no longer.
We pass by in the hundreds, walking legs, runners,
elbows pumping fast as the heart of the biker
circles and sags to the speed of wheel rubber
down the pass to Frautschi Point, past the Mendota
Garden where the gates and fences hold rising vines
from the waters of the sleeping Lake no longer.