The Drowner ~ by David Alcock

The Drowner

I cannot recount the facts: not the pythons
that clenched my feet in their bed of mud
nor the black-lab Anubis who rose with a gasp
and usurped a human face; nor the gaps
in the headfronts of the bystanders
as they skittered in a fairyland, then fled:

the hysteric with her doglead, whipping
the water's lips, jabbering excuses;
my children flitting above the clay and nettles
in brassy excitement at my vanishing;
the canoeists who jerk-stroked by, dumbfounded,
as absent and sordid as gaping carrion;

the foetus-form, tender in his clothes
slipping from the sun-beamed jangle
into brown murk and further murk, a dream
of sleep, vulnerable submariner, supine,
a serene vision that fouled the river
more insidiously than rot or sewage.

And I will not dare relate the fear,
for fear of fear, and fear of fear's evil;
the sense of our communal fugue revolted me -
none would think me less: the rulebooks say hold back -
I surrendered myself with shamed disgust:
better to risk the body's death than die.

The moment of redemption is unspeakable:
fingers seizing that corpse-scruff, surging,
the balloon-buoyed rise from the riverbed,
so glad he was gone and not drowning me;
and the moment I squeezed the life from him
and neck-deep still, cursed him into breathing.