The paper

The paper

will say something different

it will accuse, say something like

there were too many

in the boat

and not enough would get out

and stay out when he asked

it will soften it all saying

he was a cripple and what

a shame what a shame

he turned too quick

in the out-of-know-where wind

and all the kids spilled out

or there was a rogue wave

it will say and seventeen panicked

it will say they couldn’t

swim

it will say he too nearly

drowned and probably wanted to

it will say he collapsed back into the shallow

that his daughter pulled him

and his soaked coat

with its torn pockets and bits

of fishing gear

it will say bubbles hung

at his mouth and nose

and he dozed in the shallow

shallow shadows that lit on him

like cinders from a gone too long

house fire and singed his sallow skin

and really they were leaches

it insinuates he should’ve

drowned himself

he should’ve stayed sunk 

under the kids he'd later say

clung to him 

it won’t say he tried to get them

to shore

it won’t say

they gouged and ripped and pulled handfuls of hair of pocket hugged that bum

leg or any floating thing any sweet clinging thing it won’t say 

he was bruise blue

under the willow and still

half in the water

it won’t say

his lips fluttered

and blubbered

the way a sogged  new

kitten must in the dark

burlap bag it can’t

say there’s air he gasps for

there’s solid ground he can’t stand

on he can’t

do anything but burp

and belch lake and sit in suffocating

lung snuffing cold

in the air he tries

to snatch at the root of the trunk at his hip

he digs and digs

so that at home (and no one says,

no one knows) his wife

pulls out each splinter

each quill and soaks his hands

to draw the deep

ones out of the nails, and the sand

it won’t say that the bottom

of the lake was in his hair

his mouthnosethroat 

or that he’d cough it for the next

30+ years

it won’t say it.  Newspaper

stories are like that.

They move on.  Tomorrow there’ll be

another mishap.