The Muck

1
A breezy day, October leaves fly in
and lay themselves like palms upon the surface:
oranges, willow-yellows, maple reds
and here and there a suicidal green.

A night of downpour swallows everyone:

like the snake in Froggy Would a-Courting Go, 
who swallowed Mister Frog and Missie Mouse,
the moth, the bee and all the wedding guests.
The saddest song I know. 
			Drowned and gone.
Well, not gone so much as everyone
transmogrified to muck, adding a pile
to the wall-to-wall muck-rug of past Octobers.
It did no harm as far as I could see.

2
Surface diving, my strong father finds
the rusty iron wheel at the foot of the dam.
He dives again and grabs it with both hands
and strangles it until his breath runs out.
Again and fruitlessly again. But then
he takes a hammer down with him and starts
banging at the spokes for all he’s worth,
until he needs a another breath of air.

It’s turned a sliver. We can hear a trickle.
He dives and bangs some more, and suddenly
a  torrent rushes underneath the spillway,
burying the unsuspecting brook
in whooshes of white water rapids.

It took a while before the pond emptied
and bared its bottom like a forced confession.

3
It was a family thing, an enterprise:
Susan, and our mom and dad and me,
Team-Family: off to work we go, hi ho.
shouldering rakes and shovels pitchforks hoes and pails.
 
I’m getting tired of this enthusiasm,
I’m tired period, I need a rest.
The dinosaur in my DNA takes kindly
to the the muck. Deep, disgusting, slippery.
On all fours, with fistfuls of the gunk.
I slap a filthy kippah on my head.

Why have mom and dad allowed me this
vile debauchery? So out of character.