mmmmmcxviii

For the Death that
Comes at an Indeterminate
Speed on the Afternoon of July 5th

I dove into the river.
It was cold
and it was deep.

Near bedrock I hit
the current.  It was
swift and resolute.  I

am not much of a swimmer.  

The water was frigid 

and I shivered

for what seems a
thousand miles, or
maybe one, I had

no concept nor did
I have any context.
What at first felt very

real soon felt like
cinema or dreamscape.
I stayed tucked below the

water, could hold my breath
for a long time.  That might
have been a hint that the whole

scene was but unreal, that
I dreamt it in its entirety,
though I shivered wet with

something, maybe fever
that constrained me as I
was a sort of large and

frozen bullet, a pellet of
life as if a swift, low-flying
spaceship hovering just over

the ground, or the bed below
the fast-moving river,
traveling at breakneck

speed above a floor
that was a murky blur 

beneath my body as it

flew over it at such
high velocity.  Why was I
here?  What possessed me

to dive into the river in such
a rushed and jerky movement?
From what was I running?

And how could this current that,
no matter how fast it was traveling,
and how bitter cold its vein

of rush was, be anything but a
way for me to quickly drown?
Unless I could figure out, and

with haste, why I was there,
from what I was running,
what my life might have

been before that fated dive.
And speaking of fate, is this
all that my life has been gearing

toward, its only direction, toward
a goal at which I was always destined
to arrive?  If I could only get myself

out of this vein and up through
to the surface, in four...three...
two...one...  Did I make it?  Is

this the air from which these
lungs might take breath, into this

feeble, lost and bruised body?  What

of my sopped soul?  Have I simply
dreamt my way back to the surface?
Aside from the life force of water,

with which, presumably this
river is overfilled, am I the only thing
alive in all of its miles, in all those

I just traveled for a reason I cannot
fathom?  Fathoms?  Am I now truly
at its surface?  What is this echo I

hear?  And that captivating warmth 

I can literally feel from within
the pit of my gut as it moves, 

that warmth, as it flows like

the cold current (from which 

I might but now have 

escaped)?  A warmth that

flows in every possible direction

from these besotted lungs.