Childhood is a human water, a water
which comes out of the shadows.
—Gaston Bachelard
Boy beside
a rain-barrel
curling his hand
over its edge—
his fingers yellow
in the roof-dark water
he can’t see.
He places on its surface
a branch of holly
from the yard
and its reflection
breaks his own.
I’m remembering
and misremembering
and stepping through
a public field.
I am alone,
so there are three of us:
within my body,
there is also me,
but more corrective,
age-rings in my eyes,
coming down
from the house
to stay him, shouting:
what did I tell you
about playing
with visions
by the water
when I’m not watching?
His small hand
holds a wasp, a lamp,
a deer, a field,
a wall, a flame
calling for anything
he names
to be lifted over
the barrel’s edge.
The field
we step through
almost cries
within its early
fallen leaves,
to let itself be known
against our feet,
and we are overwhelmed
to know it.
We walk
beneath its trees
as when I crossed into
an August evening
with my friends,
and saw their bathtub
in the yard, and listened
to their bathtub joke—
I was in love with them,
and didn’t speak,
and there was one of me,
and it was empty.
Peter Mishler is a public school teacher living in Syracuse, New York. His poems have appeared in The Antioch Review, Crazyhorse, and New Ohio Review.
‘Human Water’ originally appeared in Sixfold.