Even far from home, we felt safe.
We walked around the ruins. Bodies of men whose heads and privates
Were smashed off. None of the statues had arms.
We heard about the boy
Who drowned while swimming
With a dolphin.
Later, we were by the pool.
My father read
A magazine. I could see pictures in his sunglasses
When he turned a page.
On the island where boys drown,
I remember his arms pulling me from the water,
An archeologist in a bathing suit.
The night was humid, the stone he put me down on
Warm. It would have been a catastrophe for my father,
But it wouldn’t have changed a thing in the world.
I was a boy who drowned, the old women would say,
Drawn from the water
By his father’s arms.
The tide came in.
You wouldn’t have known there was ever a beach.
This is drawn from “The Bronze Arms.”
