streams of mud

streams of mud we played in shallow streams of muck where there was no black, no white we were all mud-packed kids crusty-skinned little boys who knew the sludge would wash away when we dipped into the stream and splashed one another to reveal brown skin or pink touch football followed the mud spackling on a grass field with stone markers and oak trees with vertical goalposts and horizontal branches that taught us about math then converted back to branches after each game, when the birds flew away no one could tape the bladder of our football better than charlie d and duct tape was invented to hold it inside the ripped up plastic that we wished was pigskin franklin always knew when the grown-ups were coming and although it was frowned upon we still played together every week his brown skin busting against mine and charlie’s bumping into and crushing joey’s the grown-ups tried to squeeze the ‘colored boys’ out of our minds and put in memories of blue skies and clear streams, plush fields with colorful flowers and oak trees older than jesus turns out i had room for both and charlie d and franklin taught me what the adults couldn’t streams and flowers, blue skies and brown boys oak trees and birds a touchdown is still six points and we never went for the extra point tolbert