nothing, nothing

Nothing, nothing

but the shimmer in the chum, of light.

It punches through the water, a torch

beam that pinches, it ill-

umes and widens all the eyes shut up

against the sway of hair, an Irish moss

on a high, but going out, after a storm tide.

He takes the faces in.  Like an audience,

these faces, mouths and open wide,

propeller raw heads, they float through legs

and dresses pulled hemside up.

Like umbrellas.  In this liquid wind,

and viscous float that he’s poised, that he’s stage

curtain quiet, string trembling in a change

scene queue: in his palm, as though he’d never

rehearsed at all, when to pull I mean,

when, on cue, to draw

the right string and open it all up

to the awe

of the audience, fssst, fssssst—he pulls

down

            down

                        too hard

but too hard and in in in the reverse!

And the curtain, what he’s supposed

to open, is as closed

as it’s getting and now he’s panic, he drops

his hold and it’s lost in all those velvet

folds of dying.  And though he gropes in this soft

heavy air, he reasons how to fall

into it all,

the fabric wrap.

He opens and closes his hand

on the empty, he knows the string’s

gone.  But he pulls one last moment.

at nothing

nothing nothing

at water

and hair and faces and a drifting

dead boy nudging him away

from it all…