Swimming was illegal in the flooded mines,
but nobody ever saw cops out at the quarry.
The day was humid even on the park’s dirt
outfield – a few dense trees didn’t deter us kids
from making the hike. Frigid water flowed up
ore shafts that punctured the water table,
transmogrifying a swimming hole from a pit.
Hicks ditched trucks there for the insurance.
Little kids insisted a sea monster somehow
lurked in those murky, submerged tunnels.
Jimmy was the best swimmer in our class
by a full length in the hundred meter sprint –
but there weren’t any rusting construction rigs
sunk under the muck of the school’s pool.
Diving alone, he’d crunched a jagged crane
on his own leg and panicked – they’d tell on us.

I don’t hunt punji pits or bacterial
cannibals, bloodborne illnesses
or the closer-to-home factioning
and othering, hoarding opportunity
when a Scrabble tile slips loose.
It’s not the crush of a black hole,
nor a crisp solar flare aimed just right
(or wrong, if you ask terrestrial
entities). I want no end times decree,
no rain of fire, no plethora of plagues.
I’m also no prophet, no seer, privy
to nothing supernatural. But, damn,
with multiple ongoing ethnic cleansings,
a plague of dichotomous mindsets
intent on black and white, short-
term doomscrolling devolves me
into dour lounging. Downtrodden,
treading through the work day,
more of the same bone grinding
on deteriorating cartilage: my knee’s
twice as squishy as a rotten grapefruit.
Insurance claim preemptively denied.
You know about that disco parasite
that takes over snail brains, forcing
them out of the safety of leaf shade
to anywhere a bird might spot the pulsing
maggot-like tentacles eating on repeat?
A bad turn of fate while just eating to live
forces the rest of its life to be driven
by the sole goal of living to be eaten.
I feel that as I limp from my car,
a cutting wind piercing my sweater,
the sun still kicking it under the horizon.