The Races

It’s like this—at recess the bell,
us rummaging for bottle-caps
in teacher’s lounge recycling;
the rain has come, has wrecked
our gravel field and spilled
an ocean onto its southwest corner.
Spectators mill, a coliseum’s worth,
carrying water in ziplocks
to deepen gravity’s groove
for the races.
                        Taken seriously,
these things are great; we can race
bottle caps with the best of them,
all our hope small-packed upon the cap
rushing doomward into murk
not supposed to be there, really,
for it was we who stoppered the drain; 
we who won ourselves something better 
than genepool’s cruel game. 
                                              Ah!
and there’s my cap, over gravel 
dams and white-water, stuck 
behind a twig—O, I cannot, 
no, I cannot make a grave enough face.