Water

It was a dirty pool sometimes and such a shame
the public an unfit place to set shit floating,
bobbing on the waves of the pool, some smear
on the mirror made by the blank color of water
in summertime, while we were having picnics,
hot dogs and their rolls on the grill, waiting for us
to come back from swimming, a throng of boys
smelling like the dried chlorine of the city.

You would swim and suddenly come with this
muck harvest that made you sick, or if you were
the more mischievous of us chase the rest with it,
throw it at us, threaten to put it in the girls' hair
while no one seemed to want to know who did it,
who was a rogue and unclean swimmer in here
with everyone else fresh from a bath at home
with soap and some thoughts of sweetness.

If it were not enough to have the shit to swim
we had the piss, too, the liquid like a melted snake
that let on only with its smell and then we could not
find it, too late, too late because it was all over
the child in us, the child we had walled up inside
the wound of having to be in the public this way
with eliminations and the stink of these strangers
who did not know what goes where sometimes.

The stranger the strange you, cousin, the hero
who beat back the bullies at the pool, who could
lift weights like they were weeping willow branches,
willow, weep for me, willow, weep for all of us
trying these waters with you, strange cousin
who could not help but put things where they did not
belong, and when you died, I put my hurt down
in the ground with you, with my love, so strange.