Late afternoons, we'd tuck up our hems
under Minisa Bridge, scrape our white knees
on scrub brush and drowned trees to slide
 
down the dirt bank past milk-weed
gone to seed, cattails and trash to sit on stones
at the edge of the river and giggle and smoke,
 
waiting to wolf-whistle North High's rowing team.
In the shadows where the milk-chocolate river
unfolded, ooze between our toes, we'd strip,
 
risk long-legged insects, leeches and mothers
for the silt slick on our thighs, the air thick
with the smell of honeysuckle, mud—the rest
 
of the day somewhere downstream. We didn't
know why, but none of us wanted
to go home to polite kitchens and mothers
 
patiently waiting for what happened next,
the way women have always waited for hunter husbands,
kept vigils and prayed at the entrance of mines.