{"id":7233,"date":"1997-06-21T16:42:21","date_gmt":"1997-06-21T20:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hub-dev.bates.edu\/magazine\/?page_id=7233"},"modified":"2017-09-06T13:43:31","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T17:43:31","slug":"heat-wave-in-concord","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/back-issues\/y1997\/summer97\/features\/heat-wave-in-concord\/","title":{"rendered":"Heat Wave in Concord"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Robert Chute<\/p>\n

“Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth bather…”<\/p>\n

N.B.: Thoreau records his “fluvial walks” in the Journal for 1852. He read Whitman’s\u00a0Leaves of Grass, including, we assume, the song of the “29th bather” in 1856. His comment: “As for the sensuality in Whitman’s `Leaves of Grass,’ I do not so much wish it was not written, as that men and women were so pure that they could read it without harm.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
I<\/strong> <\/strong>Farmers working the fields quit early,
\nas much for ox or horse as for men –
\none old man had already died; exhausted
\nby heat, wrung out, wrinkled
\nlike dried fruit.
\nTheir women, buttoned, laced, strapped
\nunder petticoats, skirts, sleeves,
\nsit and work, work and sit
\nin the dim, dead heat
\nof parlor, kitchen, and shed.<\/p>\n

But one, an exceptional one, in
\na windowless storage room, stands,
\nnaked and white in a wash tub’s cold ring.
\nHer cast off clothes spilled
\nlike dried discarded flowers.<\/p>\n

The tinned dipper lifts water, still cool
\nfrom the well, again and again. The water
\npassing over her body like
\nunseen fingers and back
\nto the tub again.<\/p>\n

Perhaps one of them also dreams of the river,
\nof young men who float there,
\npale bellies tempting the sun. <\/span><\/td>\n

II<\/strong><\/span> <\/strong>From houses on opposite sides
\nof the elm-roofed main street Henry
\nand Ellery, leaving dishes and scraps
\nof cold dinner behind,
\nmeet, retreat to the river.
\nA man stands in a barn door, his shirt
\nstained with sweat, hat hanging slack
\nin his hand. A woman in the shed’s
\ndark cave churns the morning’s milk
\nthe heat would soon sour.<\/p>\n

They shake their heads. What beside envy
\ndo they feel as these renegades slip away?
\nDo they imagine how it feels to peel
\nclose, sweaty clothes away,
\nlet the waters have their play?<\/span><\/p>\n

At the river Henry explains that banks have
\na gender, this one, for example, being
\nconvex, alluvial, gradual, and
\nfeminine; the opposite, concave,
\nundercut, and masculine.<\/p>\n

Ellery makes some comments that
\nHenry’s Journal will never repeat.
\nThey strip and wade in. <\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

III<\/strong> <\/strong>Soon, by the opposite, masculine, shore, up
\nto their chins, they face the current.
\nThe heat of the day is carried
\ndown, away. They wade upstream,
\nwearing their hats against the sun.
\nThey hold their bundled clothing high.
\nFrom deep holes to shallows
\nthe water falls, rises again.
\nChest, ankle, knee, belly,
\nchest, and down again.<\/p>\n

Rounding a bend they see the plank bridge.
\nBoys, their work done, race and strip
\nand plunge. Boys breaching
\nand splashing; marble boys riding
\nimaginary dolphins.<\/p>\n

On the bank one boy sits, lifting a foot
\nto examine some bruise, fixed
\nin an instant as an engraving in
\nan antiquities book; but subtly
\ncolored, sunburned, bare.<\/p>\n

The two men put on shirts now, feeling the sting
\nof the sun. Bridge rails bleed pitch,
\nthe planks shrink.
\n<\/span><\/td>\n

IV<\/strong><\/span> <\/strong>The drying tails of their shirts stick
\nto their buttocks and thighs. Perhaps
\nbecause of the shirts they feel undressed,
\nretreat to the water. The water, like
\nunseen fingers, passes over them.
\nThey wade on into a shaded, shallower reach
\nof late afternoon, hear the clang
\nof a distant bell. Some farmer’s wife
\nsignaling an early supper. They climb out
\non the feminine side.<\/p>\n

They wait for the air to dry them. How long
\nthis single mile of fluvial walk
\nhas seemed, passing from present
\nto pastoral to classical,
\nback to the present again.<\/span><\/p>\n

They dress, turn toward the world of women
\nwhere mother, sister, or wife waits. The day
\nslides toward evening and the moon.
\n<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Robert Chute “Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":221,"featured_media":0,"parent":7230,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_dimp_site_id":"","_dimp_override_contact":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"class_list":["post-7233","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7233"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13806,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7233\/revisions\/13806"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}