FIFTEENTH SUMMER

His hair coppercurls in all this shimmering,
his bony shoulders broaden.
He calls,
his father's voice doesn't fit him yet.
I scan the sea-bed blotches for the danger.

My thoughts swing,
salt lifted by the wave beats.
Last night I floated, paralysed
in such a dream as this,
while lunged and parried
some poisoned barb,
slashed and shivered
until a disembodied voice announced
Your baby boy is dead.

But he's here still, straining,
not yet swung loose from his holdfast;
A sea eagle returns to her cliff face calling
to shelter a fat fledgling there, below the eyrie edge of time.
The cloaked darkness skates around the bay,
its thin scimitar curves darkly, piercing air,
then morphs again to kelp.
I sidestep its imagined arc.

Previously published in New England Review, v.16, 2002, p.15.

© Anne Morgan