The Creek
It was where my teenaged sister rinsed her baby’s diapers
— in the creek. What my brothers threw the dog into
when the dog started to stink. It was where my niece caught fish
— catched fishes — with her hands. It was ice in winter, slide,
the lace of branches overhead. And in the summer, it was slime
the boys gigged frogs out of with sticks. It was shallow, then,
all shine, up to our ankles in the moon. The sheen of darkness
Daddy stared across the nights after his stroke. A silence
sipped by birds. It was what the neighbor dammed with junk
to make a pond on his side of the fence. Then the neighbor’s
pond went dry. Our house was sold. We wiped our shoes.
The creek ran down into the ditch along the road and disappeared,
its source a spring beneath the earth the creek returned to
when it died. As so many things we loved/did not deserve
were taken back. The way our father walked beside the creek,
still mortal, whistling, called to us.
Cecilia Woloch is the author of a novel, four full-length collections of poems, and three chapbooks, the latest of which is Labor: The Testimony of Ted Gall. Her honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Foundation, and the California Arts Council, as well as a Pushcart Prize and inclusion in The Best American Poetry series. Born in Pittsburgh and raised there and in rural Kentucky, she has traveled the world as a teacher and writer for more than thirty years. She is currently based in Los Angeles.
(Photo courtesy of Erica Simone)
