CHARLES SPRINGER

Fountain for Youth

After drinking from a garden hose when he was a teenager cutting grass for money, Derrick would drink from nothing else, not a cup, not a glass, not a can, not even a bottle although he did gulp some bong water once and as you might conclude, this hose thing became his trademark and a problem for adults but for Derrick, the hose deal was no big whoop, he simply wore a couple feet of it around his neck like a collar, no, it wasn't a necklace, and if some smartass got lippy, Derrick pretended to have had a tracheotomy and would gurgle through the hose to scare him off, you see he came to love it the same way one took pride in one's inner tube or sections of saxophone or braided wire and even slept with it, showered with it, on occasion put a funnel that he wore on his head under his ball cap in an end of it and drank the rain water coming through the leaky roof like it was going out of style and he was the chosen one to bring it back.

Charles Springer has degrees in anthropology and is an award-winning painter. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, he is widely published in print and online. His first collection of poems, Juice was published by Regal House Publishing. A second collection of prose poems, Nowhere Now Here was published by Radial Books. He writes from Pennsylvania. Visit him at https://www.charlesspringer.com.