-nearer to route 6-

deep in standing fresh-water

we'd navigate the cattail reeds

stiff with base nutrients

absorbed from the silt.

above the banks

the textile mills are fixed in granite

mined from the obstinate

walls of the city's quarry.

plumes of smoke struggle

through the throats of overpowering stacks,

strain toward exhaustion, expand and slowly

break-away into the glinting overcast.

sometimes our heads break through

the stillness of the surface to the nostrils

breathing outward, agitating water, eyes drenched,

bloodshot with irritants — the skin
of our blanched finger-tips, numb as crumpled paper ––

and with the neighborhood girls who show-up,

who show-up for a reason, we

come together under the water

pliable as the clay which made us.

sometimes we'd swallow the water,
red-tinctured with algae, with oxidized metals,

in our haste to breathe inward and later

we’ll think about rumors of standing water
and its complicity in contracting polio,
openly circulating through the community,

asking questions at the frantic supper-tables.

                                              Quequechan / c. 1958