The River
Duncan Campbell

That was the summer the boy
named Fish drowned in the river,
the summer we made a bad joke

out of it by calling him that.
He washed up in another river
in another town none of us

would have recognized.
From then on our mothers kept us
close to home, forgetting

those many years the river
had been just another vacationer
leaving town, nothing like the piper

who called sleeping children
from their beds and drew them
into the river to drown.

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