You are hung safely in the past now,
fixed in the frame of the photograph
from that day in the mountains when I was afraid
but you went right in, trusting your body
to the body of the lake, its coldness
that held you even as the bottom dropped
away. I’d like to remember you
floating in the green world
of the water, the heavens broken open
like a vault above us, and summer
pouring through. How you waved
from the other side, elegant and straight,
slender as an exclamation point.
Last week, after life curdled
inside you, like milk gone slowly,
irrevocably sour, they found you
suspended in the dark of the winter park.
I’d like to imagine you peaceful,
your fall caught by a snare you shaped
yourself, pausing a moment between one world
and the next, feet lightly brushing
the ground, your body a shore
you’d already pushed off from.
I’d like to think of your hair shining
white as bone in the moonlight
as the tree stood unbending
in its mercy, and the end of your life
rushed up, like a friend, to greet you.
Honorable Mention, Nimrod’s Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry