Our Waters

After the funeral friends and strangers parted

from me like the river splits to bypass

a stand of sand and willows.

It has been so long since we fished,

except by way of dreams about Cabo --

even then we slept in the flannel of going out, the fog

of night-before Cuervo, while dorado arced.

"Arcing" is an act we may never have truly

achieved, that break out and through thin existence into non-

existence or all-existence where too much

can be as lethal as none. 

When you said pity the fools, I thought of unlucky

unknowns unlike us until on the periphery I saw

the sturdy-hinged gate between worlds you'd slapped

a lock on.  I wanted to know

the numbers -- the lefts, the rights, an answer, a question,

any question, the latitude, longitude of these separate seas

of you, me, and the impossible pulls

of endless tides, both the reaching in and the ebb. 

What if we could replay events,

go out as one, sink through unmeasured fathoms

striped by light until there was none, find

a seabed that swallows us whole,

softens our bones, recycles us for the next

funeral, and the river rising free --

would we, if we could?   A generation after

the flotsam bobbles and we watch

the foam caplets make lace

of themselves, close the gate between worlds

where dorado escape to fall back.