Dartmouth College - Aegis Yearbook (Hanover, NH)

Page 8 text:

n. In spring I have seen you come up from the river the huge masts of pine trees screening the Ught down to the dark mosses, your blond hair wet from a morning dip, a crocus in your hair for show and your sweatshirt around your shoulders. Emerging from that sifted light you could have been piping on a nail to a snake around your neck. Your shirt flowed loosely to your jeans and your jeans were tight right down to your sneakers, the moving shadows of your body playing in our eyes hundreds of sunbathers agape on the lawn capturing every motion with transistor radios: Walk right in. Sit right down. Baby, let your mind roll on. In the Tabard, underground, your easy body bends to the saxophone ' s thrust, rocked from your knees straight up to your shoulders your eyes serene and dark, turning the half-light away with a look of knowing the earth is on your side that prods the blind seed out of itself. Aphrodite, we know you. You are life ' s fish hook spun in the open air on a fine spring day.

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THREE SKETCHES I. In this vale of toil and sin your head grows bald but not your chin. Burma Shave By your pate, Professor, grown bald with the likes of me by your shining pate, the sun bouncing off it at a quarter past 3 there we sat, soaking it up. I remember it very well — A receding sun, dragging September down the river like a boatload of freshmen whose green minds, believe it or not, were expanding. Across the ridge is Norwich and over it ominous sky and the lightning flash and then, slow rumble of revelation. Or so it seemed to us, taking the light off your head at face value. we were young and uneasy under your magnified eyes bearing down on us with all the weight of Baker Library reading to us at the speed of light Ecclesiastes, your nose trailing the verses, one by one rippling the fine pages, your head bobbing up for annunciation: You see, Mr. Cheeseborough, you see? And we did see. The sun singled out the motes in the air and we counted them one by one. So the leaves hung in the air, one by one bled of summer, and one by one we coughed up themes and various other answers so that October and November were likewise dragged down river and a few of us went under and swam furiously for State Colleges and the sun receded until finally it graced you at 2:46 Eastern Standard Time — By your shining pate. Sir, they were not bad days 1 know more now by a long shot. Original road signs donated to the Smithsonian.

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III. Johnny, we were not faithful athletes, it was more the walk to the river and what we said in passing, it was more that spring on the Charles, rowing in snow, our hands locked on the oars in a pain we both knew the meaning of. Our backs sprung in the same moment to water that fell behind us. We shall realize when the time comes, coming on us as if we met in a strange place after many years — we shall find out it was more than we thought: burnished shell over dark water, the river ' s corridor staked off by solid pines, the rain that opened the leaves we walked under. We shall learn they are indelible, the voices, mingled with the air we breathed and breathe again as we live out what we started. Today, it ' s early spring. A rolling wind unfolds the leaves and somewhere in my brain I feel rustling the moments and the words that made us friends. DeWitt Beal