post apneatic

You said that you were watching the birds’ flights:
A hundred pigeons turning around the square,
that mathematics fell from their wings like lace,
that today the morphine weighed like ropes and rocks.

You told me to turn on Old Potomac and pull over by Welty Bridge.
We squinted for the light out the window and you pursed your lips.
I sat looking at the new length of guardrail
a while after you got out.

I followed you down to the creek
where you were standing at the water
looking down at it.
You walked straight in to your shoulders’ depth
and I worried about it being the end of November
about your getting water in your incision. About explaining this.

And then I ran and dove into it
and I swam to you.
Under the water I saw ten thousand rays of light
reflected up from his shattered windshield.
Blue glass at your feet wove and knit the sun
through the silt and onto your body.

You had been drowned 24 years in dreamless sleep and been undrowned:
a tube for breathing now, dreams and light again now.