Crossing
I
Bits of seaweed float just under the surface.
A soft shuddering hums up through my feet,
massive propellers churn, the boat is alive.
Water begins to boil like soup. Down below
everyone is dressed in white. Handkerchiefs,
also white, fly back and forth—sea gulls
in a feeding frenzy. I am four and a half
and cling to the railing. Everything is interesting
and sad. My nanny dabs her face
with white. Her shoulders shake.
A taxi pulls up, a man arrives late for good-byes,
sprints over the silver-gray boards of the jetty. "Hallo,"
he cries. A shiny, red box of chocolates hurtles towards us.
For a second it hangs there in the air, makes a quarter turn
and plunges into the water. Bubbles rise to the surface.
The box has many layers. I know that, counting.
We are saying our good-byes, too, sailing east
through the minefields, north to home.
The red box keeps sinking.
Slowly the bubbles grow smaller and smaller.
II
Overcast days. Water, scaled and shiny, rises and falls
as if great beasts breathed just under the surface.
We steam forward, through them, with guide wires
stretched to four minesweepers, two on each side.
On deck the crew stands in their white hats and trousers,
rifles at the ready.
The wind gathers.
Tablecloths, heavy and damp, keep our plates in place.
Tables skate away from the chairs. Later ... everything falls.
We're too startled to cry. Somewhere in London, or
perhaps a city in Belgium, a child sees the bed
with her sleeping parents, fall into night. Falling, falling ...
we're blown from our course. The wind screeches.
Atlantic swells hiss over the wheelhouse. Trembling,
father holds my hand. Six years ago, off a sand bar
in Mar del Plata, he and his friend were pulled
out beyond their strength. The friend drowned. Father,
was swept to shore by a freak wave, back to my mother's fires.
His face is white. Eyes bore into me. You were conceived in this—
fire and water. Do not give up, he whispers as we're hurled
against the dark teak of the wainscoting, against each other.
He is talking to himself. Never give up. It is possible to live!
We have missed the rendezvous with our convoy.
The sextant is broken, the sky thick and black. No stars.
III
Morning dawns in haze and sea spume. Impossible
to know where we are. In the mist the freighter wallows
idly. We wait for a cloudless night, wait
for stars. When the waves settle, the mines are sighted.
Guns pop and sputter over the sides. For days
we are rocked by detonations. Then silence.
Smoke blows over us, dark migrating birds.
In France they have rubble. A bombed church spire,
with its clock still ticking, points to the earth
where we cannot live together. The young
crewmember sights along his weapon. He could be a man
with a spear on a Viking ship or someone more ancient,
someone with nothing but a blunt stone in his hand.
The motto: To be sure. Kill.
Sweat glistens in the stubble on the sailor's chin.
I see it from the lifeboats where I've found a perch.
Flocks of flying fish bounce up out of the water,
frolicking. They scud past us, alive, diving down,
pulsing up. The war has not touched them.
The cloud-cloth shreds and tears. Tonight,
a sky with Orion's belt, his flickering knife.
IV
Something slips in close. Everyone dashes to the railing.
A collective in-breath. Mine! shouts the sailor.
I creep forward to see. We gaze at a green island,
mottled and pocked, rocking in the waves.
Yes, a mine. Perhaps not. Perhaps
something else? A turtle? It lifts its head. The eyes
look at me, small and black above the beak.
Curved legs fly slowly—thick trusting wings
through the water, through my mind. Something lives.
Beside me the guns are readied. If I don't look, perhaps
they'll not shoot. I have seen him. He has seen me.
Only that second! Now I want the great turtle
to dive into the depths. I hurl my hope down.
They shoot.
V
Without lights we're a ghost ship sliding through
the North Sea. The coasts, too, are without lights.
We're kept in silence, live-wired. For now
we're just a black hulk passing for an outlying skerry.
Almost home. In the hold a box of oranges has sprung apart.
The smell of crushed fruit wafts up
into our dreams. We will arrive undetected.
In that deep water, that one second, there were bubbles.
We travel north, now by land. There,
even at three in the afternoon, it is dark.
Our hands and faces are greased with pig fat against the cold.
Boots lined with newspapers, we walk on war reports,
body counts, the first hints, more like hopes
that the war will soon be over. Dimly we see
to play in a yard of snow, where igloo lanterns glow
with hoarded candles. Around us the trees crowd in.
The cold is metallic. Fire and frozen water.
Great northern lights flare over our heads.
They could be the green smoke of crematoria or the dawn.
We cling to our small lights—not knowing, not ever knowing
and what can be born in that.
