This week’s poem, Ken Craft’s “View from Shore,” conjures a summer’s day at the lake through the eyes of an older person, as he watches the splashing exuberance of the young. I love this poem’s clarion details of light and water and cannonballs, and the speaker’s tone of quiet, wistful nostalgia as he holds this moment close.

Craft teaches at York County Community College. His work has appeared in Pushcart Prize XLIX: Best of the Small Presses, The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor, and other journals and e-zines. He is the author of three poetry collections, most recently “Reincarnation & Other Stimulants.”

View from Shore

The pier is gone but one piling remains, a remnant tree
trunk marooned by water. The lake around it rings with
laughter and splashing of young bodies diving and cannon-
balling. One by one, they Geronimo in and climb the wet
splinter for more, shedding the mica of sun and water,
shouting as they duel each other’s awkwardness and grace.
If only I could sit on this Adirondack’s warm wooden slats
all afternoon. If only I could listen to these green echoes
until the sun is snuffed by the mountains. For now, though,
while it lasts, competing voices, bodies diving and surfacing
as if there’s no western horizon. Kids portraying once-upon-
a-me so expertly. Happy and athletic. Comfortable, unbowed.
Like the heat in an August reverie. Like the last moment
before warmth hits water, cold becoming reality.

– Ken Craft

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. DEEP WATER: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “View from Shore,” copyright 2024 by Ken Craft, appears by permission of the author.