Creek

I suppose I shan’t go fishing

Pa, for fear of finding

We’re no fishers,

Our folk, for all our bent

For fish scraps and our

Tolerance for muck dwellers and the like.

This creek is like no other, Pa,

Inky cold and familiar,

Don’t drink from it, it

Commands, don’t kneel, don’t stare down

Or wash in it, don't pry your shoes from off

Your battered stubs, not yet, no jay

Flashes past and asks how you mean

To ask a shit creek to provide.

You exist. It would, too. It falls through

These viney half-corrupted patches of nettled hickory and oak

Into a muddy slough

Into a culvert, splitting

Around the treatment plant

Then joining itself back in a ramrod concrete

Channel beneath pavement;

Then into the lake, sludge, great

Lake.

Do you follow? It’s taking you somewhere, it matters

Not where, Pa, it’s a trip

At your command, inaudible.

It’s the postponed one

We would have scheduled in these winding down days

Together had we not been

What we made of us.

In the stagnant north woods.

In the pale thick end-of-knowing daylight.

Source: Travels of Marco (Four Way Books, 2016)