And then it rained days and nights
at a time, rained until the rising water
swept through our house like spring cleaning
and carried my bed and me still in it away
down the roaring river that used to be
Main Street. I can still see my mother,
a healthy glass of orange juice in her hand,
standing on the porch, near where the door
was before Main Street ran through my room.
The bed began to spin
and rainwatet foamed all around,
railroad tracks turned to rapids
and all the stop signs swept away.
My bed rose and fell, bucking
half-hearted like a green-broke colt.
I was wide-eyed, not at the ride
but at the households loose in that flood,
a whole street awash in dirty laundry,
the next-door neighbors’ Brittany Spaniel
still chained, howling on top of its house,
even a man who must have been my father
just sitting down to lunch
at the floating kitchen table,
one eye still on the television weather.
I dreamed that Main Street wound on forever
through all the wheatfields that were home,
past all the small-town grain elevators
gleaming in the distance like the white towers
built by the slaves of some ancient culture
just to confuse all us who came later.
Finally the river would widen into interstate
and all the other kids who’d skipped school
would begin to build bed-slat masts
and raise bed-sheet sails and the wind
always blew from the right direction
and we would sail on together, dancing
through neon cities we’d never even heard of, then
out across the bay, out over the chaos of the ocean until
we would strike land, always far from home,
find the horses that waited there,
tethered patiently as a promise.
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