You Love Desperately and Like a Raft
       

the clear water that holds up your boat.
The water was clearly built to buoy the boat.
It's like how TV shows buoy the dead.
After they've died, there they are,
their kind faces float just out of reach
like a rescue. Like that tiny island.
I promise I'm not making this up.
Today the world is full of people
who are dead and also you are in it.
By all accounts, everyone everywhere
should be drowning, there's tons
of water all over and only a few ideas
about how to stay dry and out of it.
From your raft the smell of the water
is patient, which for now is enough
to love it, which for now is helping.

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Copyright © 2012 Laura Eve Engel All rights reserved
from Colorado Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission