Creek

I suppose I shan’t go fishing Pa, for fear of finding We’re no fishers, Our folk, for all our bent For fish scraps and our Tolerance for muck dwellers and the like. This creek is like no other, Pa, Inky cold and familiar, Don’t drink from it, it Commands, don’t kneel, don’t stare down Or wash in it, don't pry your shoes from off Your battered stubs, not yet, no jay Flashes past and asks how you mean To ask a shit creek to provide. You exist. It would, too. It falls through These viney half-corrupted patches of nettled hickory and oak Into a muddy slough Into a culvert, splitting Around the treatment plant Then joining itself back in a ramrod concrete Channel beneath pavement; Then into the lake, sludge, great Lake. Do you follow? It’s taking you somewhere, it matters Not where, Pa, it’s a trip At your command, inaudible. It’s the postponed one We would have scheduled in these winding down days Together had we not been What we made of us. In the stagnant north woods. In the pale thick end-of-knowing daylight.