The Man Who Drowned in the Irrigation Ditch
She always got mad at him
every time he came home in the middle of the morning
with his pant legs wet.
She knew he had fallen in the ditch again.
His legs were not strong enough to be straddling ditches.
He was too old to be walking over temporary dikes.
She wished he didn’ t do that, but sometimes he had to.
She sometimes imagined him falling over backward in one of the irrigation ditches,
his head hitting hard cement,
his body slowly sinking into the water.
Water that was only three feet deep.