de-rendering

like a needle – deep, deep, deep

be sure to exhale before you

turn over, take another breath

you see the timing is key

/

too slow the media will say

poor child just needed to breathe

who grows up around this lake and

doesn’t even know how to swim

/

that summer was hell

/

that recurring nightmare of mine

dark – I push my body, a needle

too deep, I swim in emptiness

like a shark circling a sinkhole

when I finally surface

I hear crackling from the sky  

and the cries of a mother

/

thirty-two summers I spent watching

but that fourth of july we never

found the body of that boy

it was synchronized red white and blue

diving deep, deep, deep

/

as I came up for the last time –

a cannon sounded into the sky –

fireworks went off in the distance