To the Falls

we’re all water in the end
sinking and staying
my first dog’s brindled bark
absorbed below the

falls. my old sweetheart’s awful
perfect bowl cut, locks eddying down

stream. the poem I wrote for my
lost son, all ink splotches

now. my country awash in ugly
back currents of

bile and want. today i grieve, Ophelia-like:
pockets of despair, dead

weight. and tomorrow i rise, buoyed by
ancestors, by water spirits, by

my father’s strong,
hard strokes, swimming

upwards, muscling towards
the bank after wars

after holding motherless
children, holding on

to talk, to reason, to arms uncrossed
and heads bent, ears up, so that

when it’s time to cannonball, to go
deep, the waters will
swaddle us, prepare us
to return to our loved ones