Devil's Creek

Take me back to those
Sweltering summer days
Bike down the gravel road
To the creek outside the base
Sun on skinny arms
Chin on knobby knees
Squatting in the cool
Of the rotting of the reeds
Enveloping
No one here but me
Never understood the other kids
The adults even less
So I hung out by myself
In a back road drainage ditch
I called it Devil’s Creek
So it wouldn’t seem so sad
When you can’t have what you want
You learn to want what you have
These adaptive preferences
Have their way with you
Shape world events
In the wake of an ancient, shallow late Cretaceous sea
This side of a clay-packed extinction boundary
The biome breathing, buzzing, humming in the heat
If I seem like I’m somewhere else, it’s Devil’s Creek