When morning came I found a creek
in a empty lake bed.
The storm went on.
Mother wouldn’t let us out to explore
until the next day.
I stared out the window and dreamed,
of dancing along the shoreline and fishing.
When the storm passed mother let us out
in rubbers and a raincoat that glistened in the dampness.
We slushed around in the fresh mud
that surrounded us.
A club was formed that day
of all the neighborhood boys and me,
the Fossil Creek Club.
In the next year that followed the big storm
We swarmed the vacant lot looking for everything,
anything and nothing.
In the deserted home of West Lake
I learned of the past through fossils and arrowheads.
I watched as life inhabited the empty field and
grass grew fresh and green between my toes.
The barn which once sat beside the lake
looked lonely without its shore.
The year I moved the barn burned down
before the teary eyes of the Fossil Creek Club.
Years later, compelled
I drove down West Lake Drive,
a senseless street now
with no lake and forty homes burying the creek
that was my childhood.
All the neighborhood children
stood in the street investigating
what appeared to be a weathered crack in the cement road.
© Kayla Fioravanti
West Lake Vanished in a Storm can be found in the book When I was Young I Flew the Sun Like a Kite available in Paperback for $5.99 and on Kindle for 0.99 cents.
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