Our mothers warned it was bottomless, 
quicksand like all the bad hands in dreams 
straining to grab young ankles and hug down. 
My father said storm drains spilled underneath, 
sewage and runoff chemicals suiting a lake 
in the forgotten end of an industrial town. 
This flimsy bottom meant Pierson Road would slowly sink, 
the weight of each car urging a little more bend downward, 
toward the China our mothers said we would dig to, 
toward the hell with which nuns paralyzed us, 
devil in the lake, to the hidden gold, 
the molten core of earth each felt within us, 

we who were always at least in pairs, 
not wanting to be the lost drowned boy who never came up, 
or who found the bullet-painted car that did. 
And I remember those with me, but only somewhat 
my brother, of course, and sister, and some close 
neighbors, but the rest have settled deep somewhere. 
The friend who cast fishing line with homemade hooks, 
one who waded to the dropoff and panicked, 
three or four in torn jeans who punched it out 
over who would take longest to cry, 
who could skip a whirring rock the best, 
whose BB gun could reach the skittish sunfish. 

Now I remember what must have been a dream 
basements filling with water and the lake taking those 
cheap houses down. And the poor people sold these 
new­built homes recoiling up steps as water kept rising. 
I see one sitting girl, leg bent with a cricket's arch, 
studying the muddy swirl like an ancient text 
while in rooms above are quick arcs of light 
as power shorts out. I should remember her face, 
know to describe more than how her bare leg crooks. 

Our mothers told us it was bottomless, 
but they meant the lake itself, not memory, 
not the neural blur that stretches behind us, 
takes the faces and touch of whole neighborhoods 
and sucks them down beyond our reach, 
swallowing their names, everything dear to us. 
How could we not love such a place?