Читать книгу Dancing at Lake Montebello - Lynne Viti - Страница 14

Clifton Park

I demanded that my mother

take me back to the park

with the three swimming pools.

Summer was hotter then.

At night fans cooled us down.

In the days we moved slowly,

drank iced tea or Kool-Aid.

I asked her to take me to the city park

with the three pools, concrete-bottomed, concrete-sided.

The baby pool, the pool for grown-ups

the middle one just right for me.

I waded cautiously into the shallow end,

watched boys dive into my pool,

swim like fish through cold water.

Their skin was dark,

their hair in dark little whorls in perfect patterns.

I pestered my mother to take me back.

She shook her head. Why, I asked. Why not?

All summer I contemplated the three pools, the boys

calling out challenges to one another,

shoving, laughing, scrambling

onto the pool’s concrete edges.

Why, I kept asking — Why

don’t we go back there?

Polio, she answered.

And too many city people.

I understood polio

but the rest confused me.

What could be better than

to be near those boys, their skin glistening,

their shouts, name-calling, bragging

in our pool, in our city?