Unsinkable

I was just a boy

when the dark Atlantic

swallowed the great ship down.

My father hurls me into the sea,

his voice in my ear screaming,

“Kick your feet, boy,

if you don’t want to drown!”

Hit the water

sledgehammer cold,

it crushes the air out of your lungs,

and the first frantic gulps

are sea and oxygen,

the smell of ice and black salt.

I am kicking my frozen feet

towards a frightful bobbing boat,

towards a ghost-faced woman

in a flowered hat and an officer

with a pistol in his hand.

I am pulled in,

I lie on my back, shiver and watch

as Titanic’s stern lifts up,

bronze propellers and all,

like the last farewell wave

of some dying sea goddess,

and then plunges down.

All is quiet.

The band has stopped,

and the only sound

is bodies in the water,

my father somewhere

among them.

Years later

I am an old man,

kicking at bedsheets,

my head full of the smell

of ice and starlight

and Death’s bony hand

gliding on the sea.