Black Water Creek
Remember how you tried to wash it
from your skin and his —
the red clay spinning down the drain,
its swirls of tainted yellow clinging
as you both bathed later that day
after wading naked in the creek,
he and you, clothes on
the bank, damp and daring.
How seeing the slick
line of his waist, its dashed
newness, white warmth
under so much dirt,
in the sun as you both lay,
determined to see
that which you’d followed
in cloth and denim or the scuffed
rim of a shoe. How you taunted him,
begged him to come
back to your house
where you tracked those
muddy stains, stripped down
to the steamy mirror
where he bolted wet from his pants again
stepped into the rushing stream.
How you didn’t know what
else you wanted, watching
his form, wanting
only to delay his going,
standing as you both were,
unprepared. And then that sad hour
when the sun moved in and behind
the clouds, and the green birch trees
and long, drooping vines hung
where the woods were lanky and white,
the soil-red surface flowing below, his body
forbidden, no way to dive in.
​
from Circuit by Walter Holland © 2010