When I was brave, so long ago —
I thought nothing of swimming the swirling Missouri
with a catfish five feet long scaling past me,
eye to eye — oh my god! —
nothing of kicking across Bass Lake in a rainstorm,
lightning flickering under low black clouds,
pines wind-bent, or broken like fallen arrows —
nothing, nothing, nothing,
of paddling out in Blueberry Lake at midnight,
bonfire on shore a fading star
in the rising smoke and swirling sparks —
nothing again in the Cayman sea
when I followed a coral reef down into stillness,
got caught in a rip tide,
but somehow flippered back to shore.

Yes, over and over and over
I gave my body away and got it back.
A miracle — luck of the ant who survives
when her neighbor is crushed —
and I never felt lost or alone.
Where was I, on the scale
of remarkable or unremarkable beings,
to be so faithful to whatever might come,
free to live and free to die at the same instant?
And why am I so precious to myself now
that I fear the smallest death on the shortest day —
why so precious, and so untrue
to the girl I was — when I was brave.