Penn State Altoona's Literary and Visual Arts Journal

Poem Made of Sadness and Water  

When the rescue divers found the boys
drowned in the river hole, twelve
feet deep and held under
by curved stone, which blocked
the sun so they could not tell
the direction their breath rose,
each had wrapped his arms
around his friend, the one
who dared the other to swim,
and the other, who seeing
his friend row the air, then
vanish, leapt in, only to lose
his way in the current
that hid this strange place
from their parents
and where they spied
the yellow and red iridescence
trout store at their sides
and the muskrat’s webbed
feet clawing the hole
in the bank’s mud wall
and a willow log
with bits of black leaf
swirling around the dead
branches, which reminded them
of the tadpoles they caught
and kept in jelly jars.
—Todd Davis

Originally published in Winterkill (Michigan State University Press, 2016)

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