Safe

Safe

I look back at her,
there along the closer shore.
Gathered with her children among
the nicer things the wreckage left.

Even though they were not yet born,
her children wear life preservers
marked with the great ship’s name.
They never traveled over the waters, but
their unbroken voices sing the songs
of nights on starry decks; her children
eat the food salvaged from the galley.

I wonder if she made the better choice;
staying so near the wreckage.
When the ship sank, I swam.
Frantically fighting the deep current,
feeling my ankles dragged
by what could only be called chains.

I swam with an eye toward this distant shore,
not a vestige, not a hint
to remind me of the ship. So that
my children would ask about the sinking
and I would be free to offer nothing.

I see her there, in the distance,
gathered with her children, and
the ship was not entirely lost.

For mine, for me, for the long distance
we have come
away from the depths it took
to swallow all that music, silence,
the voices and the name,
there is nothing to tell.
No song or story,
No flotsam or jetsam to keep a child afloat if,
Just if, the water comes again.