Christopher Snook: ‘The Creek’

The Creek

We came out to the creek and the concrete brick wall creeping over the culvert, the water six feet

below and the dark dank of the tunnel, breathing, skippers walking on water and the three of us

sprawled on the hot stone with the sudden soft ash of a slug’s body between us, and the long line

of fences to one side of the gulley that guttered slow-wise through the suburban backyards, the

stream dappled-dyed gold leaf in the sunlight, moving to the monotone moan of lawn mowers,

hedge clippers, the dull buzz of a thousand bugs, the waterway a child’s roadway between home

and school, school and the invisibilia of play, play and the muted rhythms of footfall squelching

in the creek then the silent pedagogy of solitude before twilight and the call home. What did we

know of waterways, then, of Red Seas and Jordan Rivers? What did we know of the sea’s

torment or of anything not soothed by the soft warm glow of our names arcing through the air at

day’s end?

Christopher Snook