Oklahoma Clay

Most evenings, right around supper, when the sky was streaked red right before dark, the old man would talk of Oklahoma- the first time he hunted squirrel, down by Coal Creek, and how you could usually sense the rain, long before it actually started. How he caught a big crappie on the Fourth of July, and how it snowed that same year, first white Christmas he had ever seen- he recalled finding an old graveyard, now at the bottom of Eufaula Lake- whether the Corps of Engineers moved it or not, he couldn’t say. Mostly he remembered; the damp smell of red clay, and how on real clear nights, he always wished on the stars If the wishes came true nobody will ever know, now he’s there forever beneath the stars and damp red clay.