The Gift

From underwater you can’t see

a thing above: a sun, or a cloud,

or a man in a boat. You see

the bottom of the boat.

And everywhere below it—

flocks of glitter, brilliantly

communicating schools.

You see the calm

translucencies in groves, a sway

of peaceful flags. Above is silver

impassivity—reflective lid.

So why look out?

No out exists.

The sky, each time it’s wounded,

heals at once. A zippering across it

instantly dissolves. A wet suit’s foot

or a long black line behind a plummet,

or the sudden angling boomerang

(murre in a hurry to

zigzag down) all come

as pure surprises, passing thoughts

that leave no afterimage.

But we have lived above it all instead,

our feet on the ground, our heads

in the clouds, where there’s

no ceiling sealing us from heaven.

Drawn into every storybook of stars—the spark-lit

universes, countlessness of dust—we think along

those phosphorescent ways there must (the brain

lights up a schoolroom rule) live others

like ourselves—in worlds

as mirror-mesmerized.

As mine, let’s say, or hers. And so it was

around the fifty-seventh month

of her life’s underlife (a mindless blind

metastasis of cells) we sent each other

messages by e-mail, sudden, simultaneous,

because of dreams. In hers, the ancestors

were waiting, just across a lake, but she

found no equipment in her

circumstances of canoe.

The paddle on the water

drifted far and

farther off.

She saw it

touch my boat, she said.

She saw me shove it back, across the surface,

safely to her hand, so she could get

where she’d be found.

Dear god, give me

a faith like that.

In my dream we both drowned.