As John Held Me Under

One second is like a thousand years. One drop, all the water in the world.

Apparently the fish weren’t a fan. Baptism of Christ, from the evangeliary of the abbess Hitda von Meschede, first half of eleventh century.

I bumped into a ton of friends down there: 
an Egyptian soldier with a pint of Red Sea 
in his lungs, iguanas that didn’t make Noah’s 

cut. A Yellow River farmer whose last earthly sight 
was a wall of water raging for his wheat. 
Verily, the terror of one million people drowning

is as stomach-churning as the terror of one.
That freckled girl on St. Lucia’s Day—1267, 
a crown of candles flickering on her head— 

felt the same cortisol rush as a close call 
with a semi on I-94 but couldn’t swerve 
from the North Sea. That Johnstown baker 

hadn’t the wherewithal to pray 
as the barbed wire snared him to the fence. 
And all those Boxing Day tsunami folks, 

as surely as the Jordan’s bubbles clung
to my beard, I spotted every capsized catamaran 
that swept fishermen to the growling sea,

every shredded rooftop that wasn’t high enough, 
every bloated hand that couldn’t hang on
to the child. I was buried with all of you  

in death. Even deeper, heartbreak. I held 
the pressure of water’s cruel energy
and its lapping addiction to life. When John

lifted me out, I shook my hair, hovered 
over the surface. Just like that, the sky broke 
open pink and gold, and the Dove swooped 

for my head. Of course my Father was well 
pleased with this gathering, the Three of us 
fused in one burst of light, the rest of you 

flashing in the drops on my face.