Stick Elegy

The dead were still singing Turn the lights down low Beneath Yellow Bridge where years before, clowning And ass out, Stick jumped with nothing but the State Championship trophy in his righteous clutch. The water Was supposed to be deepest there, and for three seasons Straight MVPs: Charlie "Fly" Kennison, Long Timmy Long, And Rocket Jefferson, those are the names I knew, jumped Free. But Stick's ankle broke. I fished him out, crumpled And bawling like the day he was born, like an object of Baptism, and a life of bad luck followed in the shape of Floods and fractured lightning, and then, numb, tooth- Less, and changed, the dead refused burial, striking out, 2 By 2, 4 by 4, from the morgue house to raise trouble at The bridge. I started hearing birds everywhere after that.