They never feel they can be well in the water,
Can come to rest, that their bodies are light.
When they reach out, their cupped hands hesitate:
What they wanted runs between their fingers.
Their fluttering, scissoring legs sink under.

Their bones believe in heaviness, their ears
Shake out the cold invasion of privacy,
Their eyes squeeze shut. Each breath,
Only half air, is too breathtaking.
The dead man’s float seems strictly for dead men.

They stand in the shallows, their knees touching,
Their feet where they belong in the sand.
They wade as carefully as herons, but hope for nothing
Under the surface, that wilderness
Where eels and sharks slip out of their element.

Those who tread water call and see their blurred eyes
Turn distant, not away from a sky’s reflection
As easy to cross as the dependable earth
  But from a sight as blue as drowned men’s faces.
  They splash ashore, pretending to feel buoyant.