When you are floundering
in despair and wrath,
your voice raised with irritation,
I don’t know how to pull you out of it,
unlike the time you nearly drowned
in the bay off St. Croix
when your snorkel filled with seawater
and you just managed to cough out
“I need a little assistance here,”
not wanting to bother anyone by crying for help.
So I towed you by your vest back to the boat
where you thanked me in your coy, wet embarrassment.
But that was many lifetimes ago
and we were different people then.
Larry Oakner is the author of three books of poems: Sex Love Religion, The 614th Commandment, and Sitting Still (chapbook). His work has appeared recently in WINK, The Oddville Press, and Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine. A graduate of UCLA, he lives on Long Island, NY.
Oh, I'd like to share this with My Beloved Sandra, but she thinks I'm a pretty good love-poem poet, & this fine work pushes me down the list considerably. My hat is off.
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