When you were twenty, you almost drowned
on a hot beach in India, where even the spine
of the coast had spices woven into its sands.
You had learned to stay afloat in the cusp of a wave,
how to be held, carried along. When your legs lost count
of the kicks and you thought you would sink with your
dear one, you tipped a face back toward the sky,
and saw the riddled multitudes of every good thing –
the ribs of clouds, fingernails of God bright as crescent stars.
After the human chain that brought you to shore,
the slick tanned arms of the ayahs, men sucking
together quick as tentacles, you did live. In fact
you shook yourself out all over the world,
learned to cup your own hands on piano keys,
marvelous teeth that you could bend into any shape.
When you are finally tired, I sit with you on a beach
in June. The sand sleeps. We watch teenagers jump off a dock,
flinging seawater into their open beers. I pull up next to your lap,
too old to sit there but my hand on your knee anyway,
and the hard gauze of the lake aligns itself
to the backdrop of the blue.
Your lungs are clean, no hand tying knots
in your chest. You stand up strong and lithe
and skirted, join the fish that flit bone-clean
in the shallows. I want to link our arms together,
have the urge to twist and meld into a rope to pull you
back in but you raise your hand. Now you have gills.
Break the body of yourself and dive beneath.
The water's swollen hands reach to touch the nine a.m. stars,
lucid pockets of the sky, a wind to dip your toes in.