I was ten and new,
out with town boys,
my knowledgeable friends,
singing exquisitely lewd songs,
under the echoing Wolf Creek bridge,
songs about girls and beer,
things we knew little about
but didn’t know we knew little
and wanted to know more.
We were comrades in our slight guilt.
I felt grown-up up with them that day,
when my child world cracked and got bigger.
We swam in the silver water
with the silver fish
below the silver bridge
naked as Adam before he cared for clothes.
We didn’t care.
On the way back to town dressed and drying
we sang a hymn I had never heard before,
ninety nine bottles of beer on the wall
until we lost count due to hilarity,
as if we had drunk those bottles, as if
we had been baptized into the church of the world,
the church our parents joined when they were young
but had learned to deny in the church of God.
Yet, on certain nights,
I heard their muffled worship
on the soft altar where I began.
2000