On clear days it rains buckets, swelling the headwaters and the algae blooms gluttonous.
Rufous clay breaks into wider trenches and the towhee flashes away.
You never flinched when I crushed your hand on that first day on the ****** rise before a charging buffalo sun, gnat swarming my wild panicked eyes, giddy with each hill blue upon bluer receding.
I'm a woodland kid, baby, creek crouching with roots and canteens of sassafras in the leopard light and leafmold; the wannabee Tarzan swinging on wintercreeper vines. I'm the scurrying rat in the stormdrain, taking the shortcut home for supper.
But there you were, straight as loblolly pine in the canyon lands of Chicago, prairie drifted in with the drifters and the hawk winds of winter to find the woodland kid dragged blind before the gridiron sky.
Two rivers led nowhere, two rivers and a chance confluence of running merged and pooled in a one bedroom cave on Belmont, hatching our tadpole dreams, fattening the swimmers with mustard greens and gaudy hotdogs.
When we crested the banks, on the continental divide, one to the woodland, one to plains, the water ran as waters do, and as in each great story, the boy follows the girl, to the ****** rise before the charging buffalo sun, where you held my hand and I saw the sky for the first time.