Faith

I was raised in the middle of a staggered,
squashed-together queue of upended cigar-box rowhouses
whose backyards descended the steep grade
like a flight of narrow stairs.
Our raw cement back patio was exposed to the sun,
while the one next door, a few feet lower, 
was covered by a wooden awning that was always flaking 
scabs of brown paint and riddled with carpenter bees 

that bobbed from the eaves.
The rest of our yard was also open, shadeless,
covered with scorched crabgrass, while theirs was a strip of gloom
sandwiched between a tall plywood fence
and the shaggy hedge we shared.
Where we had a swing set, they had a sour tangle of rhubarb. 

One day, just before he left his wife for a woman in a wheelchair,
the blade of our neighbor's shovel chinked stone, a large flat slab
that he pried with some difficulty from the dirt
while all us kids stood around and watched.
Beneath it was a hole, just wide enough for a child
to insert himself into. We dropped a bottle cap
but could not hear it hit bottom. There was no Wonderland 

or Devil's Eye glittering in the gloom down there,

just a dark and empty shaft exhaling musty air. 

Our neighbor quickly replaced the rock, covering it with sod,

and from then on we would only skirt -or, if dared,   

stretch to step across that spot.

A difficult epiphany for a sheltered child to swallow:

I've never unlearned the lesson that the earth beneath my feet

just might be hollow.