I remember the six of us – 
 piling into a Chrysler,
a cooler packed with colas
and bologna stashed in the trunk.

We’d drive to Daddy’s old farm,
before his parents sold it and moved
to town. Park along the road and
hike through the undergrowth
carrying that cooler between us.

The farm sat untouched for years.
The owners dead or in a home. Their
children miles away from caring.

Down we walked the overgrown roadbed,
a remnant of tracks that led to their house,
now gone.

Past the tree Daddy said 
he and granddaddy slaughtered goats.
I could almost hear the bleating, almost
see the blood, dried long ago.

On we walked, over fallen limbs,
dodging briers in the stand of cedars.
We’d come back to them in December.
When, if we were lucky, snow would fall
as we chose the perfect tree
to sit in the living room corner,
covered in tinsel and hope.

Sweat would trickle down our necks
by the time we finally reached our Blue Hole,
a pool of sparkling green, not blue.

Trees stood high above it –
filtered light danced upon the water,
and summer heat vanished as we
stepped in letting the water rise above
our knees.
Let the cold catch our breath as water rose
to our chests.
 
Schools of small minnows
flickered away. Water skippers
skated on their arachnid legs.

Here, Daddy told us, he and his boyhood
friends came to swim in their summers.
I sometimes  thought I could hear echoes
of his laughter in the leaves
and the moss-covered sandstone.

Now, so many summers past,
I wonder if bits of our laughter
can be heard there, too,
among the cedars, or lifting
from a spring- fed pool where
minnows flicker in filtered light.