For the creek, being wet

Just a small creek, running through our back yard, separating nothing except this side of you, and the other side of you. No special names like “The Hole” or “The Secret Spot” given to you. Just a “Mud Factory”, a small place where fine-grained sand gathered and where we could stand and grind our feet and made red mud. You were what my father built a bridge over, what Steve broke his cheekbone and collarbone and arm falling in to. I hid in you, waded in you, and smoked my first joint hiding behind your banks.

When I grew up I always came to you first when I came home, and I felt at home sitting alongside your water, looking down and upstream. I took the women of my life down to you to show them your fish, and onetime your crawfish and a bullfrog. Then, I think in the early 1980s, too young, really, I came home and felt nothing sitting beside you. Your magic had gone, or you had turned your face away. It was a windy day and a branch fell from high in a tree and almost landed on me and I felt an anger and hostility from you. You didn’t want me there, or you had gone and something else had taken over that part of this Earth.

Much later you let me come back, but only for five minutes here, a few moments there. I don’t even carry pictures of you anymore.