All these recollections
about the quarries
that have become water parks
and golf courses. Some were brave.

Others not so much. And you know
it’s not true
that no one got hurt.
We were all desperately seeking

to numb ourselves
from the pain
of being so young
and alive. Submerged

survivors. Suicide
divers breaking open
the waters across
Connecticut. The dead

are not waiting
to be forgiven.
Their crimes
were not in the dying.

Not your story
to tell—even underwater
with only mica and brownstone
listening. Never hunted

down, no, we were
the ones closing down
the bars. We were Woolf’s
late-night cave dwellers

watching “from some high place
among rocks.”

Note: Poem references a line from Virginia Woolf’s last novel: Between the Acts.