Vox Populi
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Robert Walicki: Wet
Into those warm, wet fields again and again,
where we came, pulled by the blur of light,
after the last soccer game in the July dark,
we walked off into the veil of torn chain links,
broken bottles, hungry for the rush and waiting
for the sweet hit of a cherry, wondering
what it’ll be like to be stoned,
our heads weightless and drifting back
under the spinning floodlight bats, and rain.
Abandoned baseball field becoming mud, becoming landslide.
There was no name for us yet. We were too young for that kind of fear,
too young to hear the stories of kids
disappearing like a passing storm.
Not thinking we wanted to disappear too,
in the lush ooze of skunk and smoke
till that wash of laughter found us.
Softening the memory of what we didn’t have. Who we’d never be.
We hunched down in a circle, as if the burnt inch of our passing
was sacred, sharing our hot breath
in the thrush of summer crickets,
late storms needling our bodies
under the dark swirl of sky, naming us there,
waking us back into this hard life, running
Into thunder, from the crack of our voices,
saying See you tomorrow, yeah, see you later,
stay dry, man, be safe.
Copyright 2018 Robert Walicki
Robert Walicki is a poet and licensed plumber who lives in Pittsburgh.
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Robert Walicki
Vox Populi 