Waterwise
by Partridge Boswell
—An de bheoaibh no de mhairbh thu?
You never liked the ocean, its cloying brine and vertiginous
mystery of open water. The week it took to sail from Brooklyn
to Southampton you nearly opened your wrists—trapped with
in-laws in a seasick spate of endless green-faced buffets
and waterboard pretense, when you could have flown in hours
and explored all of Cornwall and Devon by the time they docked.
Waterwise, you preferred your family’s sand-spit on the southern Gulf
where you’d wade in warm aquamarine’s acquiescence and welcome
even stingrays and barracuda, danger losing its dubious credentials
in that bright translucence. You loved its calm bathtub clarity
so much, we scattered some of you in your favorite inlet there
where fresh and salt comingle at the mangroves’ mouth. Some here,
some there—funny how you’re no- and everywhere in the same wink.
Freed from panic boxes, we go looking for you now in the Azores
or Seychelles or the pond next door, trailing whale song and pods
of dolphins in our glass bottom boat, exploring psychedelic coral
and unrequited anemones waving in the waterlight. Last night
between my heart’s hidden spring and honeycomb, I dreamed we
were caravanning beside a raw Gaeltacht coast. Without dipping
a toe, you were the first to dive from dark rocks, dripping sleek as
a svelte selkie, beckoning us to follow you into a cold cobalt
abyss. You know best how this next swell rolls: connection’s
deferred return, treading out over our heads to reconnect us with
what’s already connected. How we’re supposed to unfold and
unfurl ourselves, as last night’s white horses scatter a red tide.
The Coast Guard declares the sea safe again, and we can look
each other in the beacons of our eyes and for the first time actually
see someone else beyond our own craggy shore—faces risen close
to the harbor’s surface, gorgeous and terrifying as the Man-o-War
we spied bobbing off Bantry pier, which proved to be just a compass
jelly, common as one of Rilke’s angels, flashing in the shallows.