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.