A serrated cry from the pool next door
sliced our brains, though aimed at the head
of him who on weekdays startles his car
at 4 a.m. “Look, Dad! DAAADD!!!”
–followed at once by a serrated
plunge that won his applause but tore
whatever in us had not yet bled.

Two hours since the sun had gone down;
and still the ‘Look, Dad!” –still the plunge.
My wife was enveloped now in a frown,
her lips unloaded dreams of revenge.
“I wish one of the darlings would drown…”
–About to agree, I was stopped by a strange
tenderness: “Oh, let them alone.”

Let them alone. At the same age,
same month, same hour –though
lacking a pool, lacking a lawn at the wetland’s edge –
I called back at a mother’s call:
“Five minutes more!” With night, with fall,
with manhood coming, five minutes are small
(I almost said to her) privilege.