I woke before dawn that day, you
drank coffee, mended your nets.
I cooked bacon, two eggs poached in water,
toast, tiny triangles swimming
with butter. Your last breakfast on land.
You chugged from the harbor through a red sky morning.

Twenty years later, they bus me to the pool each morning.
I stop at the edge always, thinking of you.
So far I have only looked, feet planted firmly on land.
Varicose veins web my legs like a net
as I hunch in my suit, pale and ungainly, unable to swim.
Twenty years, and I still hate the water.

Fishing off the north shore, you hit rough water,
a freak squall, and no other boats around in early morning.
You'd been overboard before, such a strong swimmer.
It was a day before the coast guard found you,
ten feet from the boat and tangled in your net.
You died miles from any sight of land.

I used to dive from heights, land
without a ripple, barely breaking the water's
surface. Afterward, water seemed dangerous as a net,
ready to trap me in the light of morning.
I couldn't move for thinking of you.
Twenty years before I dared swim.

I could not bear to swim,
shunned water for solid land.
How could I love what had claimed you?
As if you abandoned me for this lover, water.
My hatred of her a kind of mourning,
grief hanging round me like a net.

Across the pool, a child goes down as if pulled by a net.
I dive without thinking, begin to swim,
as if I'd done it always since that morning.
Bear the child up safely to land;
how right it feels, this water.
I swim as if saving you.

Australian crawl through mourning, butterfly past your net,
Dive deep and find you, inside me, swimming.
We jump together, land, somehow, back in water.

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