☀ Today's Poem: "The Creek" Crystal Wilkinson

The women are standing in water to their knees,
their dresses wafting out like sheets on a line.

This place where burdens wash away in the frantic dark
& the women's dresses float like blossoms,

a boy is drowning—his head turned toward home, his body
facing the farmer's house, where the girl he loves sleeps.

She is the farmer's daughter, the girl who hit his head,
the one who hoisted that rock, watched his blood ooze out.

This is the way you wash your clothes in the creek.
This is the way you catch catfish in deep water.

This is the way you catch a fish that doesn't want to be caught.
This is the way your secrets twist their necks below the surface.

The women are standing in water to their knees
their dresses wafting out like sheets on a line.

On the creek bank, a girl runs circles, catching the wind
& the women's dresses float like blossoms, they sing prayers

for the boy's mother who stands in her kitchen & cries.
The circle of women in the water whisper a prayer

for the girl who tells everybody she loved the boy who died.
Her mother stands in the backyard & cries.

Their fathers brood in the fields, walking slow as lepers,
hearts & houses loaded with grief. A lamentation for all they've lost.

I almost drowned once, my grandmother's dress billowed out around her
like a sail. She was my harbor. My lifeboat in our creek.

My mother stood on the shore frozen with fear, my father's name
mute, his kiss spoiled fruit in her young sweet mouth. A boy's ghost

haunts the creek's edge, dark water ebbing, flowing like a deacon's robe.
Does he dream of her hair, her hands? Is he sorry for what he's done?

Years later, on nights soaked with teenaged trouble i'd climb
out my window, walk to the creek, crying to all who'd listen.

The minnows leaped in moonlight while i waited for the boy.By then I'd been raped too but i waited for him to surface.

I wanted to ask him questions, wanted to hold court with the moonas witness. I'm here, i said. Come on!

They say he was handsome, but the boy never showed himself
unless, of course, he was there all along—in the trees, the wind,

in the shadows, in the calling of a far-off bird.
At night the creek did scare me, its rush like a boy's whispered threat

in a girl's ear. But i didn't flinch, determined to stay, practice.
The women are always standing with water to their knees,

their dresses billowing out like sheets on a line, standing guard.
There was always something roaring in those trees, teeth gnashing,

fathers killing boys for the sake of their daughters,
eyes glistening in the dark.