The culvert preserves the stream, the path, the traffic of people crossing
here, where tiny Lupine attract a certain species of butterfly, where
early Cambrian sand can’t be farmed, not well. As kids, we called it
sugar sand. As kids, we Adams soured on power: the water smells
like water smells. Metallic tang, mud & leaf mould, cold
even high summer. Sneaking away under bridges
had a smell, in the land of Synesthesia, long-ago afternoons
when parents left you unaccounted for, and older brothers & their friends
lured & tackle-boxed, knew where fish hid, where mud turtles
waited to be caught. The shock of it, the first time – all raised flesh,
like a welt, a bruise of cooled blue, and your feet sunk
into the particulate marl ankle-deep, unable to move. Water rushes
the carved depth just below the metal & concrete, whatever you’d sought out
and crossed. The water brown like beer, when beer was something
you hadn’t tasted yet and still wanted.
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