The Drowned Boy's Voice

Thy say there is silence among the river's floor dwellers;
I hear it.
In the summer,
the water is cool and embraces treading limbs.
It becomes the earth, but you don't realize it --
such is the confidence after hours
of splashing, playing, laughing.
You forget that yours are lungs,
that once your toes feared the sandy surface below,
muddy and scattered with clam shells.
In the summer,
all the kids pack up their trunks,
groan when kissing their parents goodbye,
and then write secret homesick letters
by the dull light of a battery-dying flashlight.
Throwing towels on the dry sand,
they jump into the accepting water.
There is a sudden shock
when the sand runs away from your feet.
And suddenly you are kicking alone,
away from the rest.

It was an accident.

The arms turn into drums,
pounding the surface to float, to live, to breathe.
The rhythm falters;
the body tires and twists
in the final gasps.

And there is this voice
covering your own --
promising a peace and you cower from it,
then love it.
It is your voice.
In the summer,
when the boys dare to swim the depths of my home,
I see the feet above,
the sun shining through their toes
and falling dimly on my grave.