There's cigarettes, Percocet,

&

hollow, twisted

Pabst in tins

& there are five of us in a river:

there's Big John from Stuartsville

climbing out the river

clambering over rocks &

through

the trees oozing sunshine-

there's the current faint & fading & growing

in places

water green like a woman's eyes

& there are four of us in

a river and one

on a yellow limestone boulder

must be fifty feet up-jumps

his back hooks like finger

pulled to wrist

there's a splash without splash-ripple and

current and ripple-the Jack's Fork River

blue-green like a lady's eyes I know

and still

unstill and hard and unchanging

there's me and Curtis and Henry and Edwin

wondering

Was it too shallow to dive or is

the current too strong or is he

too drunk to remember to swim?

Big John comes up

panting &

        whoooo-eee &

smiling

through the blood