*

Here, there, the way silence

tows you below the waterline

and though you are alone

 

you’re not sure where her name

is floating on the surface

or what’s left

 

grasped by a single wave

that never makes it to shore

splashes as if this pen

 

is rowing you across the stillness

the dead are born with

–you are already bathing, half

 

from memory, half by leaping

from the water for flowers

growing everywhere –for you

 

this page, unclaimed :a knife

dripping with seawater

and your throat.

 

by Simon Perchik

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, Osiris, The Nation, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is Almost Rain, published by River Otter Press (2013). For more information, free e-books and his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.

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