My father often said in his 70s and 80s
that he wanted to go in water—floating
out beyond the sightlines of our family
home on the Long Island Sound, taken
by the waves, the salt, the absence
of suffering. Instead, he went in cotton,
the sheets he increasingly sequestered
himself in, cocoon-like, resisting air,
sun, society. His back to the water,
he drifted in and out of sleep for months
before he left one morning, the dazed
dawn just beginning to hint at the season’s
departure, grey waves pounding the shore,
the distant horizon hazy and hard. By the time
I got there, his room was empty, the curtains
open to white waves, wrestling the wind
in afternoon’s glow, the few remaining
boats, bopping like sea lions in sun.
Drowning never sounded like a whole
lotta fun to me, but the next morning
I went down to the water, walked
in, and released myself to the waves,
eyes open to the widened sky.
The earth stilled, the sound of salt
resounding, seagulls and loons drifting
in the blue-white sky like paintbrushes,
vacillating on their next stroke.
I go floating whenever I can now—
on the shore, in pools, at the local
float spa: head and feet to clouds
or ceiling, the water takes me,
weightlessly wandering into a space
where every woe is suspended,
like a soul between earth and ether.
And for days afterwards, there is
silence and salt caked into my ears.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 24, Issue 4.
Genevieve Creedon is a poet, scholar, and nonfiction writer. She earned her MFA from the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine and her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan. Born in Montreal, she has lived in Connecticut, New York, Maine, Michigan, NJ, and most recently, Indiana, and enjoys exploring the worlds she encounters with her canine companions.
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