Big Creek

1.

The curved stream in winter,

couched quietly in snow shadows

where three boys wander

(smell the cold and slipping clay).

Their frigid breath clouding the air,

Their trail of footprints

coming through the brush,

down cliffs, out of wood paths

where ice drips from dark limbs.

The leader carries a stick.

All three are zipped in coats and hoods,

frozen feet curling inside boots

on this coldest day of winter.

Woods and creek almost silent.

Under the thick ice of the creek

a gurgling sound where warm sewer water 

issues from city conduits,

releasing wet steaming odors into the barren air. 

2.

In the summer

a hole is made in the fence

where woods vibrate down a steep hill

into the zoo.

There's an empty swimming pool,

a railroad trestle,

manholes into long tunnels,

tracks and gullies,

cement bridges and hillsides of dandelions,

the violent thistles and the City all around.

The creek is alive and rushing in wide brown churning,

the muddy waters where we are wanderers,

soldiers,

our sticks swinging against the thistles

in a motion like swords. 

3.

In the fall

we pick a careful path across the silent earth

that hides our place of loss.

We are the mercenaries of a lost city.

We are the voices of the bulldozed ground,

vandals that stalk the machines

and set the discarded brush afire,

then follow our pre-planned escape

to the top of a concrete bridge

that overlooks the spoiled park.

For the shortest time we feel the chill of ecstasy

that these defiant hands and feet ignite,

as we watch the fire engines gather below.

A moment of resistance against the Road, 

the noise of bulldozers, the crawling lights,

all of these powers that rip the soul out of summer nights. 

4.

Now there is an Interchange

where trees and rivers were.

My memories are all that remains of these neighborhoods,

these woods, that winding creek between shale cliffs,

now buried in asphalt, confined in culverts.

Only the road remains to take me to other places

of life and water, to other cities, to plains and mountains

where children explore and speculate on their trails of fantasy.