For D (Poem)

Below deck on the diving boat, in amongst the hanging wetsuits
drip drip drip on the woven floor
the murmur and snatched song of the dive instructors buzzing around me as I sat
quiet as a cat, eyes fixed to the horizon line
the impossible beauty of the graded blues, the tenderness of the clear greens
flickering jeweled fish on the edge of vision
a wonder most truly, this
a church of the sea, built in brain coral and angelfish
in small sharks and turtles

so sitting there, resolutely watching it recede from me
I thought of you, and where you might be
I thought of things you will never see
taste and smell and touch beyond your compass, now,
wherever you are

I thought of holding my child in the rough water and I
thought how you cannot, and never will

and I added my tears to the vast indifferent saline ocean
salt from my body to disappear into the greater brine
and I whispered to the bright sky memories of you

leaving a tiny piece of you there, in that cathedral
leaving a tiny piece of me where the sun warms the reef
and the silver fish play.

- Kathy, 8/7/14