water dreams

Clue from across the way, a loosened clue, looking at me, a runaway clue, a speck—
one that I might discover dazzling river water
(when goggled or open-eyed), discovering!
—rushing, turning in wide spreading dusty molecules, leading me by the eyestrings along the pilgrimage the river is southward roaming…
and this rock hints at a pirouette, and that one still isn’t finished spinning, here I go…
Fish in jaws, I’m human again. Bones popping like under-water ears. Sorry, I was getting a clue from the water.
The only memory I have of my childhood is of gutting fish. There was a shaky-kneed breathing machine standing always behind me, me with the knife and the squirting horny-heads pinned to the table. He wouldn’t push unless I edged a body of water.
The breathing treatments, as he called them, reminded me of tides, or white noise machines for insomniacs. “Watch out for it! Watch it! It’s a land mine—Go to the water…” That’s what I sometimes woke to, his shouting, his self-waking. We would catch our breath and he would snore again to the rhythm of the breathing machine. I still dream…
I can. Hold it.
A few more. Sec-
onds. Coming up is like laying the last brush stroke on a terrible painting. It’s finished but what a failure. I was destined to something biblical, something babbling. Something whereby merely holding my breath means defying gravity. Destined for immersion, silver, dark, dark, heavy, where I can be buoyant. Or sunken.
He was behind me. Not someone else—Something else. I was spawned.
He took me to the Toccoa. The mangroves. The gulf. Cooper’s Creek. Sky Lake. He would sit and regulate his breathing while I’d be lying underwater regulating my exact depth with my skin. I never followed the current. Just down there. Just a catfish.
He would fall asleep and I’d come up. “River rat,” he’d call me. Took him two breaths to say. Then he’d wake up.
River rat. Close enough, I’d bubble.
Look at my fingers, all pruny from just talking to you. Webbed from just talking…
Undulating under water, water passing above in white-washed sheets and rushing above like violence and spawning and breathlessness, and
down here just blueness
waiting, undulating, bubble in my chest. Blue, blue beluga in the baby sea.
Where are you, Barnaby the Barnacle…blue barnacle…
Bubbles jumping to the surface give me impression of sinking
Nothing around me to look at but specks, dusty molecular specks shimmering
I will follow one. It’s a clue. Says go deeper, seep into the sand, where the water seeps into the earth. Go deeper. Rest there. Wait. Don’t forget the waking. Up.
Here I come, breathing machine. Don’t forget me. About to greet you, wake up! Wake up! Breathe! Breathe! Open your eyes!

Grandpa! Get up!