Chris Nevin(’74) wrote the following poem and read it aloud at the Waboos Memorial on August 28.
To an elegiac white rabbit
And so a time has passed
When the return of a man, time and time again
Could be tallied against the lengthening tides of all our lives
When the constancy of change was tempered by the
Soothing surety of one man in his rightful place
And so a time has come and gone
When the rhythms of routine and toil
Could be altered by his broad smile
When the music of fellowship and camaraderie
Rang through the rafters under his buoyant direction
And so a time has arrived
When the northwest wind carries a mournful cry
‘Cross Dunmore’s field of blue
When the history of a man has
entered the waved and eddied stories of time’s rapid embrace
This time now fades from our view
This past must lie in the ethereal
Must reside in the relic’d
Must be tensed as this man is no more
And yet, with this man, some greater part has slipped from death’s grasp
Some transcendent light crests the ridge of Moosalamoo under Waban’s gentle guidance
For if ever a breeze could linger beyond its earthly bounds
It would be this breeze
If ever a voice could rise above a greensward of sylvan idyll
It would be this voice
If ever past joys could fill present spaces
It would be these joys
If ever in the shade of one man’s plantings those of us whom remain could prosper and grow
It would be this shade
So now we gather in his shade, all the wiser, all the more compassionate
Now we pause to consider the right way to live, the right way to pass
Now we embrace, hold tight and dear, the love of a man, a place, an idea
Now we act in concerted ways to stretch those memories and acts across broad plateaus
Toward even broader horizons
Of time and locus, amidst and among the hearts and minds of fellow travelers
Whether that journey be kneeling in the bow of a canoe for the first time
Or seeing the possible instead of the probable
Whether that journey be a brief sojourn on a placid pond
Or an epic travail through the woods of the far north
Now we live and breathe that legacy, today and forevermore
And tomorrow, tomorrow we wake an enriched and ennobled people
Keewaydineesi evermore, zing, boom, ta-ra-rel