Two and a half miles from our mobile home
To the old cattle ford in the river,
Which we called “the bottom end,” of course,
Laughing until beer foamed from our noses.
We’d drive my old Ford or Randy’s Rambler
Down through the twisted, dusty ruts
To where the road dipped into the brown water,
And there we’d sit for hours, watching
The phosphorus foam wind around the bend
Toward the Oklahoma border two miles west.
We’d drink our bootlegged Budweiser
While Lynyrd Skynyrd or Willie Nelson
Filled in the frightening silences between us,
Those moments when we looked away
From each other’s acned, eager faces
And stared into the spaces between the trees
Where we all knew God was hiding.
Then someone would say, “Aw, shit,”
Because some one of us always did,
And we’d silently toast each other
With our watery Oklahoma contraband beer
And someone would change the eight-track,
Maybe to Waylon or Black Oak Arkansas,
And we’d fish for awhile or shoot at cans
And talk about football and cars and girls—
The things we knew of and didn’t and never would.
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