You would run through the neighbors yard
Overbrook and Billantau Street
Cut the corner to the break in the trees
Heading where the light sinks into the dark
To take the hidden path that leads to the creek
And the embankment where they'd sunbathe asleep
You can see it where the light bleeds back in a head
Where approaching with your knees bent down
Keeping close to the slope
Crouched low under the cover of reeds
You'd sneak and reach your hand in behind
Try to grab on the tail
Hold it up in the air high
Feeling it writhe
Feeling it panic
Trying to twist
From your hand clenched tight in a fist
As if trying to swim
Swiping its claws toward the ground
But finding nothing underneath it could reach
To break free into the water below
Where you knew you shouldn't ever get close
How told since birth
They'd leaked poison throughout it all
The only history you really knew about
Not how gypsum spilling outward gave a name to the creek
Or how mining it dug tunnels beneath
Every street in the neighborhood
The ones you took to get to the woods
You knew their names, not where they came from or meant
All those dead men
Fading languages left
Last vestiges above intersect
To the river where the creek went
Where two centuries back
They came prophesied to settle the land
Took the rapids out with the dams put down
To float timber to the factories on the banks of the grand
To build homes
Before they made furniture
And others came to live and worship
Started a church
To raise families and their families started ones of their own
And you follow in reverse where it goes
Backwards home
To where you're staring at the water below
What would happen if you fell down the slope?
If you drowned where would your body wash out?
Would it carry all the way to Lake Michigan?
And if you didn't would the poison inside
From the river kill you later in life?
In the kitchen with your wife and your kids
Eating dinner when your body gives in
And again
Sitting with your family in church
Would it matter anyway if it did?
If it's true what the sermon said
In heaven there's a ledger and you're there
Circled twice on a line in the back
Does it matter then?
If he'd never draw a line through your name
When you found that magazine in the woods
Why the shame flooding in
When they asked if it felt good to look and it did?
And you blink and you're back
But you're no longer a kid
Here at church to say goodbye to a friend
Who like you was circled twice on the line
And he took his own life
If you give in to the poison inside
Could they deny you when you try to get in?
And at the water again
You swing your hands above the creek
Reach to find the ground
There's only air underneath
And you understand a lack of control
When you look upward from the water below
To know whatever held you up let you go
And you fell
And that there's only one direction the water flows
There's only one direction the water flows
It only goes forward
Forward
Forward
There's only one direction we go
And we can only go forward every day
To the end where we began
To the darkness up ahead
And everything that happens in life
Will never happen again
And you spend your whole life learning to swim
And you can never know what's over the bend
And every moment passing
Is another one you'll never get back
And you can only get older
Older
Older
Man turns the lathe
On the blade sharp
The grade angled down
Carves away
At the grain
Where the hand
Holds the blade
Spins around
And falls soundless
To the ground
And what it takes
Gets swept up at the end of every day
Gets thrown into the stove to burn away
Turns to flames first
To burst bright to smoke
Climbs to fade
Makes the steel glow with warmth
Gave to hands
Touch the face
And what remains
Becomes an arm
Becomes a leg
And when assembled
At the end
Becomes a chair
For you to sit
Became the railing
On the staircase
At the first place
Where we kissed
Became the roof
Became the bedframe in our room
Became the house where we first lived
And we became
What we became
What we need here
Just to breathe
Everything in me
Spinning on the lathe
Up against the blade
Turn me into shape
Carve it all away
Throw it in the flames
Turn it into heat
Let it keep us warm at least
And me?
Let me be the legs
Let me hold you up
Let me never break
Watch the past fall away
All our lives against the blade
Because the time goes
And we change
Not what we made
But what can be
Come with me
To cut the yard
Go where the dark leads
To the creek
Through the reeds
Will you please
Do it just the once
Do it just for me
Let me sleep
In the sun
Let me feel you reach
Hold me out
Keep me up above now
Let the time freeze
Come and lie here with me
At the creek
Before we go
Before we must
Fall in it with me
Carried in the rush
Into the lake
Let it wash us all away
Become the waves
Become the air
Because we breathe
Because our lives go only forward
And we die
"Looking back, are there any things that you wish that you could have gotten accomplished that maybe just didn't get done?"
"I knew I had done my best. I can live with it. Because I've lived in it all of my life. I was born in it, so I've learned how to live with it."
