Only Love And Family Afloat Poem by JDC LeDrew

All those I love lay safe and asleep in bed,
So I am free to drift back into summer
On the river

We three, floating down the sleepy Willamette
In our boats.
The watcher, watching;
Two small brown bodies draped in yellow rafts,
Amid a snow storm of drifting cotton balls
Cast down from the trees.
And a mixed-up swirl of swallows all-
Dancing on the wind.

For all our hopes,
One raft did not complete the journey,
Left abandoned there upon a sand bar.
Then one oar was broken,
Another lost, carried away by the rapids,
The captain forced to stand awash
Waist-deep, in imagined peril
And call for rescue from her crew.

And so it was as I recall;
Two of three boats, lost so young in the day,
Leaving only love and family afloat.

Later that night, after fishing,
We dove naked in the waters
Then dried ourselves before the glow
Of a smoky driftwood fire.
We looked upon each other naked,
Casually, in the fire light.

We saw nothing more than family,
Standing there together.
On an island, on a river,
On one sweet summer’s night.