Caution: Dark Hole

Men dug a hole in the parking lot outside the pool in which my daughter is swimming. They put up orange and white sawhorses. The strung yellow tape around it. Caution. Last week I checked out the hole. Six feet down it went. A horizontal pipe at the bottom had been cut cleanly. That pipe was big enough for a child to crawl inside and be stuck forever. I looked down into that dark hole a while. Listening. Then I walked away. The hole stayed with me. Then this week men filled the hole with dirt and gravel. They installed a new elbow and vertical pipe. Fixed a grate on top that no child could fit through. That drain is a darker hole within a dark hole. Soon it will be topped with concrete, smoothed flush with the parking lot. I climbed over the sawhorses and tape. Cautious. I checked out that drain. Knelt and put my ear against it. Then I called down into the darkness. Hello, I said. A child's voice echoed back a hollow hello, hello. No wonder that hole is fenced and taped off. No wonder all that caution. I moved away but am still wary to look at it, to imagine the hole that was there,or even to write these words.