If You Hold Your Breath Long Enough

 

If You Hold Your Breath Long Enough

Time and the sea will transform
the broken bottle into beach glass:
but the anger that smashed it
is not so easily bejeweled

even as you tell yourself
that old story that if you
hold your breath long enough
as you go under
the sea will repay you
with the jewel of the moon.

Even as you tell yourself
this is a harmless caper
a dance with a circus bear

a game you can win.

And if you can just
hold your breath long enough
you will find the ivory
shipwrecked with the beasts
of blood and memory—

the wink in god's eye

that allows you to outrun
the tide.