Paper Boats

We launched them from the curb as if the street were a river
and rain had given us a country of our own.

Homework became hulls. A grocery list became a sail.
The gutter took our navy with a serious hush.

One snagged on a leaf and we called it a harbor.
One vanished under a parked car and we called it the sea.

I still fold a margin when the weather turns.
Some childhoods keep a fleet in the wrist.