Liquid Recall

Lying beneath sweet birch
I eat teaberries while the creek
tells stories buried beneath its silt:

There is a tin can scraping
the gravel under the trestle.
My friend is coming to chat
and kicks the can between two
saplings on the bank, scoring
the winning goal. He has never
lost a game, even against Pele.

A perfect dog skeleton crouched
at pond’s edge, its head wedged
in tangled roots. Unquenched
thirst from invisible tongue, startled
bones began to run and chased me
past the mine that collapsed on three
Italians, through the typhoid spring
that took my grandfather, over mounds
rumored to hold Cherokee ghosts.

The saw-toothed birch leaves smell
of wintergreen. Cottonwoods dab white,
like an early snow. In spring the silt
will churn and the creek will speak again.

**

Another Part of Town

I wondered, as I sat there,
chin in my hands, elbows
on my knees, if somewhere
in another part of town
black men with shotguns
watched over white men
in filthy black and white striped
clothing, all chained together,
maybe singing Elvis Presley songs
as they scooped leaves and debris
out of the ditches. And was there
a black boy sitting in his yard,
ass fidgeting on the hard Georgia clay,
chin in his hands, elbows on his knees,
watching them, wondering opposites about me?
Swing Low Sweet Chariot made me lazy.
I flopped back, enjoyed the morning sun
as it rode the humped-back caravan
of oaks heading north and south.