Someone Else

I entered someone else’s suffering and when I
Surfaced I looked behind me into the sheen of it.

We’d been to the bottom, the muck of scales and femurs
Of trees. I’d communed with the dead, my dead, to make

Sense of the sunless depths. They rocked me—father,
Grandmother, friend—in arms of slippery weeds that moved

Like flames. Later the pond was a river that writhed,
A worm at the end of a line on a map I couldn’t follow.

So many burps and lurches, so much pull. After I was
Dry I saw my old hopes were ants in the bathroom,

My life’s work an absurd pageant, that I had been
Alone and stupid, trying to steer the current like a mule.

There had been no we, no sense, no fire underwater.
In the mirror of the river a silver river inched like a fish

Along a woman’s scalp. I was supposed to know
This woman. I was supposed to love her.