The Government of Nature

Drowning

61 Drowning I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. —Genesis 32:30 Held down underwater, fish meshing their eyes to mine, the shout of the tide of water inside water is all that this is not, this stinking sweat of boy men, the stink of not having bathed, the smell of what leaves the body gone dry and cracked and then what is thrown in, as if the years ahead are nothing, this earth I landed on is a false dream, a lie I chose to make this bed hard, and the prayers are to some beast that is turning all of us as my hands are held by hands that should pull me up over the hardness but makes the hardness a granite memory that will always come back, and the hurt, O God, Jacob must have said when he realized who the angel was, awakening to swarms of flesh-eating fish savoring blood, part human in ways we cannot see walking on land, this karmic pain I will always know as heartache until I learn love’s lessons, as if the gates to hell have my name engraved in these waters, this sea where pain says . . . remember. ...