Out by the swimming hole, a wooded hill bulged in the distance, and we always talked about going there one day, trekking through fields under hobo clouds that rode the west wind. But we only splashed about in the creek, sending the frogs and shiners scurrying amid pulsing blotches of sunlight, and then we sat on the bank, our flesh turned to Braille by the icy water.

You’d warm slowly as the sun reached through the trees to fling gold coins on the creek and the birds carried on their endless discussions in the branches. Perhaps a garden snake would slip through the grass beside you like the thread you had pulled from your sweater the other day. Once, when it was only two of us at the swimming hole, a butterfly floated by on a leaf that had curled up at the edges like a hand holding its delicate rider. It was almost something from the Oz book my mother had read to me. We didn’t know then that they were our best days flowing away.

~ Bruce Henricksen, excerpt from After the Floods

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