‘TUNA CRICK’: Kim Nicholas Auman writes, “I am a proud Bradford
native and occasionally memories of my childhood have a way of
peeking their head up in my writings. I recently penned ‘Tuna
Crick’ about my ‘rite of passage’ experience – learning about pain
down by Hanley Park and Tuna Crick.”
“The Tributary filtered purely
down Allegheny mountains,
bubbled at the wild morels,
fed moss sod on fallen cedars.
But then seduced by refinery oil,
and like an obedient woman,
she capitulated into man-made hands,
settled the lees in the valley,
and with one long sigh
gave birth to Tuna Crick.
Here we learned balance,
on granite edges on the reservoir,
knee socks thrown under the elms,
Levis rolled to the thigh,
stepped carefully in bare feet.
We poked Gardener snakes
as if they were secrets,
and then flung them down to the water,
their ringed undersides spilling old grudges.
Patted the soft white bellies of toads,
tendering guilt for removing them
from their families,
kicked Miller beer bottles
discarded by the older, bad boys
– they were glass then
with no tin pop tab,
we heard them roll,
clinking and tinkling.
I remember sitting
on the crick’s concrete rim, laughing,
the second slab far below me.
Dandelions bent upon that ridge,
white bearded and ready to let go,
and below in the water’s lip
rainbow scaled fish arched up,
slid easy into cocentric circles.
I pitched forward, straight down,
six feet below on the hard rock,
still in a sitting position, dazed.
I could not breath for the crushing
of my tailbone.
The other girls cried from up above,
their pouting voices bouncing off the water,
out of the iron teeth below the bridge.
‘Are you alright? Are you alright?’
Unable to speak, the tears dirtied
my cheeks.
I might as well have landed
in the dry riverbed of Hiddekel.
There is a epiphany at eleven
that crying cannot save you,
even the gentle persuasion of hands
cannot comfort you,
places where voices will not reach.
Ultimately, gravity becomes your love-mate
when you understand
fish will drown in air,
floating is only the memory of babies
and for those things beneath
the slick pebbled water.
