Poem: Afterlife

Afterlife

In the hot summers of childhood,
we’d wade a mile in the river,
you, up against the current,
and I, down toward the sea.
We screamed like bloody birds,
so before we met
at the bend of the stream,
I heard your calls strafe the air.

And then we stood, face to face,
at a fattening of the river,
next to a beach, rough with granite and quartz,
minnows’ lips on our legs,
a cold ache in our feet,
the shadows of water skeeters—
like bunches of black grapes—
flicking along the floor.

Suzie, I never lost you
through the brutal climb
of our twenties, our failed marriages,
your treks to Kauai, your plummets
down the ski runs of Bear Valley.
When we’d meet, you’d kiss me on the lips,
tell me Schnapps cured a cold,
say you liked waking up higher,
close to the sun,
so you settled in gold country,
waiting tables and selling real estate—
then, at fifty-four, you were gone,
your stomach full of bourbon and Oxycontin.

I’m still living on the same stream-cut terrace,
high above the dwindling creek.
Your mom’s old house on the floodplain—
sold—full of strangers.
I wish I could tell you how seldom
I go to the bottomland, how there are gates
on the trails, how the land, disgruntled,
sends up walls of slick poison oak.
I see a heron lift up and glide away, her legs trailing,
her call on the wind.