MASSIE'S CREEK
Wilbur D. Nesbit

I've just been wondering, Bill, if you remember Massie's crick -
Or "creek" they call it nowadays - with sumac growing thick
Along the banks, and willows that bent down to make a shade
Above the dreaming: shallows where we boys one time would wade.

Remember how it used to loaf sedately through the town
And out into the pasture lands, and then would hurry down
Between the cliffs, and how it sang a song to you and me
That told us of the outer world, the rivers and the sea?

I've just been wondering, Bill, that's all - if you still hear it sing,
If you can shut your eyes and see the spray that it would fling
Above the rocks, until it sparkled on the hanging ferns
That nodded from the mossy cliffs in hidden nooks and turns.

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Remember how we used to throw our bare selves down, and lie
A-looking through the checker-work of good green leaves and sky,
And count the cloudships sailing through the sea of limpid blue —
Ah, then we did not know how much that meant for me and you!

The sunshine shuttled through the leaves and jeweled all the stream
As laughter sometimes bubbles through the mazes of a dream,
And we knew not that roundabout the big world waited then
To rob us of our boyish ways when we should grow to men.

I've just been wondering, Bill, if you can hear old Massie's crick
Call softly through the summer days?  And does your heart beat quick
In answer? Does your mind leap back into the long ago
And laugh and sin"- and dream again the days we used to know ?

    
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