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Bathers at Asnieres, by Seurat

Only the men on the riverbank Behind the boy in the red cap Can look for what he sees For what he sees he calls to Through raised cupped hands Waist deep in summer heat

A little red dog jerks around Next to the reclining man in the bowler Toward the sound at which he gazes. Silently near an oafish and idle Big boy dangling his feet Unprotected and chalk shouldered

Up the bank another boy under a straw hat Watches another boy sink Shoulder deep oblivious to a sculler Vanishing toward the place the boy calls

Frozen in an imagined breeze Poplars and sails flank smoke stacked factories Beyond a bridge where a skiff ferries the others In heat that stifles smoke and sails and the calls of boys To unseen shores Under the gaze of all others Rod Titus, September 1991