The Brother Swimming Beneath Me

The Brother Swimming Beneath Me

is not dead yet, though the water
he moves through is green and dark,
and the shadow from the bluff presses down
like a hand over us both, and the eelgrass
must catch lightly against his legs, must bend
with his passing and lengthen, and stay,
this boy who is not dead yet gliding flesh tone
and wavering hair past, though I want to say
I'm floating in an oar boat and his face is hidden
or blurry, I can see him again and again,
all snorkel and fin and dolphin kick, reaching forward
through handfuls of wavering light;
and ten years before his death his blood is still whole
and smooth through his veins - no - I mean to say
my brother swimming beneath me isn't only that day
on the lake, I'm saying this now because we live
on water and the dead move through us
and we bend with their passing, and lengthen, and stay;
I can feel the dull pull of the oars as I follow him
back to shore, tracing a rise of air through water
meeting air, his hands reaching forward
as the shadow from the cliff darkens us both
and he glides through it into the smell of wood smoke;
my shoulders work sore and that first weight in my chest
I would later call grief; while now I turn the words
bowline, half hitch, cat's paw over and over again in my hands,
I should say I'm tying this thin rope to splintered wood,
I'm careful and maybe too slow or didn't pay attention
when my brother showed me this because
he's already just footfalls on the pier and fading now,
the note of each board heavy and muted, me floating
there on the water, stepping out onto the pier, this pull,
this weight, my brother's footsteps small wet splashes
on the wood grain already soaking through, shrinking and gone
before he reaches the top of the stair - I have to say
his footprints disappear before I can put down my own
though I can still hear him rising, rising.

© Brent Goodman
originally appeared in POETRY