Elegy

When she was young my mother saw a boy drowning.
It was strange and slow, she tells me. When he fell,
heels clipping dock edge, the water rushed 
from under his head so that for a moment he
looked like a saint, haloed and sinking. From above,
she could see all the details of him—mouth, cheekbones, 
eyes suddenly dark, cavitied. I’ve heard the story
enough times to imagine I know the boy,
sometimes I am the boy: looking up at water
closing over my head like clouds, the silence sudden
and holy, even. I imagine myself from above—
floating, arms outstretched in some illusion of flight,
outline of me against shifting seawater. 
My mother is somewhere on the shoreline, 
listening to the ocean tell her something ancient and necessary
as it pulls the beach away from her. She pours sand
from hand to hand like coins, tilting her head as if weighing
its value—as if she knows with each palmful
it will weigh less and less until none.