On a late spring day, when summer began to take shape, you lowered your head to bear an uneven compromise. How your voice held steel, make sharp by the sound of it aloud! You were drunk on each syllable; you could not even hear what it sang.

When you were young, you spent your summers in Maine. And stripped of the friends of the friends you made, you gorged yourself on Frost and Hemingway.

When you came back to Michigan, you would walk with words you did not speak and dress yourself with an air we couldn't reach.

So when you go back to Maine, I hope that you stay (where you have cornered truth and beauty). And each borrowed refrain you sing, you sing, you sing will sound the same to the lonely, lonely sea.