I was launched from my dolphin mother
one block from the town reservoir
and two from the C&O railroad tracks.
Come sundown, the Santa Fe came burning by.
Through the passing glass, I watched white
jacketed jinns glide on scarlet carpets,
saw silver lit silhouettes of cocktail
travelers, smoking honeymooners.
Down the tracks past the City Limits
and fraternal lodge signs, the country club
winked high above the golf links. Silver
security fences with climbing ivy tried
to hide the El Dorados, Catalina swimsuits.
From the rural route, I fished the ditch
for golf balls, sold them a dollar a pail.
Or sliced away the cratered surface
till rubber bands boiled like nests
of new-hatched garter snakes.
Back when I was a dolphin daughter,
waiting in ditches,
walking the rails.
Chris Llewellyn is the author of Fragments From the Fire (Viking, 1987), which received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares and other journals.
