Читать книгу Waking - Ron Rash - Страница 17

Knee deep in the Watauga’s

rock leaping whitewater,

my brother loses his balance,

his life if our father

doesn’t flail downstream

swimming air, running river,

tripping on stones to collar

his son, drag to a sandbar,

confirm with tentative fingers

his empty back pocket.

We pace back and forth on the shoreline,

down to the bridge, the other bank

before the sun finally falls

blurring the river in darkness,

my father not saying, don’t worry,

a life is priceless, not saying

something like that, not tousling

my brother’s hair and smiling.

For this is October. My father

believes he’ll be fired soon,

will face winter’s cold coming

without thirty-four washed-away dollars.