RAIN DITCH by Pinkie Gordon Lane

We swam in the rain-filled gully
one day
three black kids
unmindful of death’s specter:
water snakes
fever
cow dung floating like a drowned corpse,
the level of that ditch
our shoulders’ height,
the water to our asses.

And just over the hill the weeds
bowed like cloistered nuns at vespers.
At eye distance just beyond,
our house’s top formed a gray peak
against the crimson sky.

We remembered our fun for days,
talked about it,
longed for another torrent of rain
so that we could splash again
in that death trap…

Category: Family,