It punctuated all my summers when I was small.

A round murky place,
With a mythic deep end,
That held stories of dead horses
And abandoned BMX bikes.

The horses fell to their demise through the fickle ice that covered the inky waters in winter,
And the rusted BMXs were sacrificed by the Cooper boys that lives down the east back line.

There was also a lonely raft in the center of the pond.
We loved swimming up under the ancient beast,
And between the slimy support barrels,
There was just enough space to hold our secret conversations.

Splashes of imagined sweetness,
About someone back on the shore, or probably the life guard.

Our voices echoing in that pocket of water and air,
Trapped by aged and rotting wood.
Love songs on repeat.
Vaulted away for safe keeping.

The shallow end is where I learned to float for the first time.
On my back, eyes in the sky,
Clouds heavy above,
Plodding along, dragging the wind behind them.
Sound lapping in and out of my ears.

There was less seaweed then you would imagine.

The pond had a thick sandy bottom bracketing it’s south side.
It would get crusty and gravel like after a hard rain,
And would occasionally steal the skin from the soles of our feet.

For a time there were diving boards,
You could dive straight into the deep end.

I tried it once or twice.

But touching the bottom wasn’t for me.

I could never shake the thought of those dead horses,
Their teeth snapping up,
Waiting for me to move into their reach.