Air

Air

“and by twos and threes

the children sank”

                         

                        adult eye-

                        witness

All those rescue boats, and men panting above the drowned.

Their breaths are flung nets:

cast, drawn, cast, drawn.  Hooks and weights, buoys and floats… 

Such a breath is a man all drift in the still

waters—it is flight and thermal still, it is purposed

calm, like the crows above the sunken dead, even those sloe moments

of prophesy have flown to nearby trees to see

the first boy heaved in by his sister,

a boy who right there on the shore needed no 

gaff or net at all, just maybe a quick smack

of breath, just a slap, to shock him back, like a blow

into the face of a screaming mother.  Because if it's only puff-purse-puff

their hot air out, cool air in, in deep, if it's deep

enough to reach the least peninsula of the lung, to get it to the cove…

cast it in toward shore – to float it to sink it to make it take hold,

maybe, maybe, maybe it will stick.