Gooseberries

Gooseberries

In the middle of never and always the water would move in its way
Crashing in tiny brakes over tiny rocks
In tiny creeks sitting between tiny hills

We rolled them up, as told, but
The ankles of our pants still got wet as we coerced crawdads backward into buckets
And the outhouse scared me because of spiders

And then we picked gooseberries on the Rowden farm somewhere around Dixon,
Missouri
And the adults would take them
And make cobbler

And the words of the adults, at night when we were supposed to be asleep
Worked on another level
I wasn't there yet

Ripple through my slowing aging skull, watery
Breaking over increasingly vaguer rocks in vaguer creeks
In montage