After the photograph Manatee Drive 02 by Isabella Hayeur, 2011

 

No one who
has ever seen

a body of water
has not imagined

drowning. Surface
divides my eye

and my breath
holds me.

The underskin
of the canal

grows light
that dangles

down, tickling
the cement throat.

I figure we are
mostly helpless

against water
because we

are mostly water.
When I go under

I count:
1 Berryman;

2 Berryman; . . .
If you dream

of drowning,
you wake up

under an ocean
of air. There are

so many stupid
sayings I confuse

them all. I know
what to never

bring to a gun fight
but what should

I never bring
to a drowning?

Not even bombs
intimidate water.

One motivational
saying goes:

If you don’t give up,
you win. But I’m

pretty sure that’s not
how it works

or as Kafka said:
The meaning

of life is that it
will end. The water

both buoys
and buries us.

To prepare yourself
for your near-life

experience: dip
your open eyeball

into a bowl of cold
water. There is

always tension
on the horizon.

I will be the one
wearing rust

and erosion.
Algae may one day

rise up against us,
but until then

please allow me
to oxidize in peace.

Usually the last
thing we ever do

is gasp.

 

###

Matt Rasmussen is the author of Black Aperture, winner of the 2013 Walt Whitman Award and also a finalist for the National Book Award. His poetry has been published in Gulf Coast, Water~Stone Review, Paper Darts, Poets.org, and elsewhere. He received a 2014 Pushcart Prize and is a founder and editor of the independent poetry press Birds, LLC. He lives in Robbinsdale, MN.

 

“Canal” appears in The Tides (TLR Winter 2014)