On summer days at the swampy edge of the river
    He would bundle his shirt and shoes, his pantaloons
         And drawers on the dry bank
And wearing only a wide-brimmed hat
    Would begin his water walk, light-footed,
         Feeling his way as deliberately
As a heron, at first upstream, even more slowly
    Than the slow current against him, and with one hand
         Would touch the lives of bedstraw and water starwort.
The open mouths of sundew, the radical leaves
    Of floating heart, dull claret and green,
         Pellucid in tufts and fringed
Like carrageen moss—all waders and waverers
    That had learned to take the earth like him as it came
         And went with the swells and fallings-away
Of wavelets and backwash. And at noon he would turn
    And retrace his morning, sinking gradually
         Deeper, seeing his feet like the undersides