The Rise Above the Water

1

On the dock my father built

I watch lights from beach houses

quiver toward me,

streak across Boca Ciega Bay.

The moon shoots itself

to the water. Light spins, flashes

like Spanish doubloons,

which dazzle, tempting me with miracle.

Yet the neighbor’s dog howls.

A gull pounds the air with its wings.

A mullet slaps the surface.

The grainy boards beneath my feet

are real enough. What then?

I must have sat on these rough, slatted boards

a hundred, a thousand nights,

and have never seen such a display.

2

The day my father died,

I fell spinning through air.

The room shifting,

I could no longer distinguish

cool dry ceiling odor

from carpet must.

Hours, I clutched the couch

for lack of walls or wings.

Days swallowed weeks.

Men held out their hands to me

and I grasped.

3

The day my husband left,

the sky doubled over

and hung inside out.

Every stain on the sidewalk

bruising,

every crack

bleeding,

when the ground sloped upward,

I sank,

and as it sloped downward,

I rose,

a noise like maple trees

rattled by an October squall.

4

One day I woke inland,

Your face, the sun, lifting me.

A spinnaker, I sailed up between oak branches,

Billowing, while crosscurrents battered canvas.

The night the lights went out,

tremors gulped my blood’s heat.

Corpses glided in and out of my sleep,

touched my face with pasty fingers;

they stared at me with my father’s eyes.

I called you,

Told you about the ceiling light’s empty bowl,

The rain’s drip into a plastic bin.

You told me I could dominate darkness.

I believed,

Needed to believe,

Felt myself filling,

Saw the pressure fall away,

The furniture settle into place.

I remembered laughter.

The thought of you, enough,

(No stanza break)

I listened again

for a spoon clapping a dish,

a shower running,

a child calling,

a school bus gathering itself.

I listened to the windows

holding off the storm.

Monet’s flowers, rain-beat,

the underbrush alive,

leaves swelling, bending,

slowly greens, yellows, tans

swirl and merge.

5

Yesterday I cowered

back to my childhood bed.

I shut the window

on the waves sloshing,

fronds tussling.

Sea oats fluttered your farewell

until it came

whispering down my spine.

6

On this dock I once watched

the horizon through my father’s eyes.

Cigar scent choked the salt.

I now see the ladder at the end of the fill.

Without the shroud of his smoke,

I can climb.

Today, I no longer need

to tuck myself.

You are lifting deserts

miles from here.

Yet every water ripple sings you.

Lights dip and rise,

weaving recognition into backwaters.

Against your voice

throbs music never before heard:

my notes.

Sounds slowly surface

until every white shadow of moon

licks my palms, my fingers.

Calls lure lights across the bay.

Tones draw into the seawall’s hollows,

lamp shells, which cluster

and shine like pearls,

holding off everything

that is empty.