incident at lake weir, take 2

he'd been  mining the rock for eleven years
driving over from beverly
hills into sumpter county, set the charges
for some real pretty, real fine blows, he'd
come to them green, knew the tools
but not much else. dug some trenches in his time
but he worked
his way up
to super
&
he had an uncanny way of staging the explosives
so the lime tumbled close to the pit, maybe a few yards
would hit the water, but most of the payload
was extractable. what happened....i never seen it happen
like that before, it was like
the earth just....turned to pudding, slid him
nice and easy into the water he didn't
even have time to see where he was going
i don't think, we musta blown a cave
we didn't spot with the sonar,
cuz that rock turned slick & just slid into
the limestone  pit like it was bein slurped
into some huge mouth n nothin
we could do--no
lifesaver, pole, nuthin was faster'n the lime.












2
drown in lake weir during memorial service

his daddy seemed resigned, a little stunned
that the boy, he shook his head, man
he hadn't seen in eleven years
since he was twenty  & the distance between father
and son at apex
was suddenly gone. his son, boiled
away in a hellish pit, no body
to mourn, no
grave to place flowers or the game
ball he'd always wanted to give
a grandson. he shook his head, his hair
blows in the boat's breeze on this otherwise
quiet, windless day. to the east, large white capped
clouds build in the stillness but they are miles
away, gathering the heavy rains that will wash the afternoon
air clear, after all this business is done, this ceremony
which must signify everything his son was
and could have been.

paradise, he snorts under his breath
i suppose i could see it. if it wasn't so damn hot
all the time. he didn't even have snow at christmas
this thought catches him like an upper
cut, christmas eve.
that day. of all days. who the fuck works on christmas 
to mine lime fucking stone he mutters
another  time, the phrase by now
a mantra. paradise, sure. where the natives
are uneducated and the workers are shit. strong union
man, kenny senior. leans his head back determined
to enjoy, at least, the boat ride, the company
of familyand the friends of the man he would now
never know.

five adults and four kids were cramped
and the kids where whining about the heat,
they came upon the point, a thousand yards
out from the shore, water 12 maybe 20
feet deep, judgin by the sonar. no big items
on the scan. he throttled the boat down
threw anchor .hang on one minute then you can go
swimming he told the kids. he was gonna
say something about ken then, that was his  plan.
 he  stared at the cloudy water
watching sunlight catch the  ripples made
from the boat's wake, golden, squint maker, 
reflecting under his hat and the boat's
awning like flags and morse code until
they died down and the water
was as still as the air. the lake had a liquid
gooey look to it under the tropical noon
sun/ the clouds, hours away still, rose like mountains
marching toward the lake.
he took the baseball from his pocket, turned
to the center of the lake
drew back and heaved it  as far and as high
as he could. there must have been some
kind of high wind because that ball 
travelled damn near two thousand yards
f he lost sight of it in the sun's glare
as he turned his head up for a minute
he thought it was never going to land
thought briefly of souls
and the hereafter and homeruns. it was
so quiet on the lake you could
hear the plop as it landed , the water so still
they all could follow  the ripples
from the impact making their inexorable way
across the water to the boat. when the timy wavelets
hit the hull, it was as if some spell
which had kept the whole boat
load of kids and relatives  silent
and heavy as midsummer florida heat
had been broken. his niece gave
a little yelp like a puppy, jumped
up and down and begged
to go swimming now, pleeeeeeease?
the captain nodded and settled in
as his companion and the girl jumped
into the   water. oooo
they said, it's so warm.

they'd been swimming for a little while maybe
ten minutes or so, not venturing too far
from the boat when the niece
began to squeal again. ooh, that was...
icky. she began to struggle and the woman
swam over to check the life jacket, push
her toward the boat. she felt a tug
on her legs along with a coldness, cold bottom
water stirred up by convection and the motion
of swimming  she told herself. but the tugging
was more insistent  cold wrapping
around her legs like swirling grabbing fingers
trying to pull her under. the captain hearing
the struggle, stands up. sees the thrashing
thinks gator! he jumps into the water right
beside the girl, grabs and pushes her the few
feet to the boat's stern. she grabs the ladder
and is hauled up by the terrified adults. his companion
still struggles a few yards away now so he swims
out to grab her. she's hysterical, has gone
undert
twice and coughs some lake water
out of her throat. but there's no blood. if there was a gator
surely there'd be red in all this thrashing? she grabs
hold of him around the shoulders, screaming, crying coughing
he turns to swim back to the boat when

  he feels it too, that cold slick grip
dragging and sucking them both down as
the spectators on the boat watch in disbelief
then horror as the surface remains unbroken
but a for  few ripples & water bubbling
as if just coming to boil.





later the rains will come & the scorching
lightning, thunder grumbling and roaring its approach.
the search for the victims will be suspended
as the mountains of water spill themselves
into the lake, furiously battenning
its  flat surface, giving it teeth
with whitecaps that will capsize a joyboat.
tomorrow they'll find the bodies a few hundred
yards from where they search today. side by side
practically, as if they were just taking
a nice dip on a hot, quiet day.











3.

i dunno what came over me
i was drinkin a little bit it's true but
i dunno. it was like watchin that boy
so chicken shit of a little water
and he's seven years old dammit he
should already know how to swim so i got tired
of him bein so pussy and i'm gonna teach
him how to swim like my bothers taught me
dunk him under a few times and he'll get it
but sissy boy starts cryin and screamin after the first
time, so i dunk him again, and instead of that shuttin
his mouth he cries harder so i do it again and again
to teach him, i'm yellin at him to close his goddamn
mouth when he goes under that's how you keep
the water out but he just keeps crying harder
n harder trying to get away so i grab him by the ankles
and haul him deeper and hold him there
and i get so mad when he won't close his fuckin
mouth that i hold him there longer to teach
him a lesson and those mutherfuckers
on the beach are shouting they gonna call
911 if i don't stop and i was hungry
anyway, a day in the water'll do that to ya
so i stopped. how is it drowning
if he dies three fuckin days later?