Don’t Go in the Water

Don’t go in the water,
it’s too dangerous,
mother would say
as I lingered at the edge,
staring at the ocean
as if I were at a museum
before a petrified sea.
I would picture the slow, lonely
death of a lighthouse keeper,
a ship swallowed in a squall—
lanterns snuffed by seawater—
sharks circling a life raft
crowded with survivors,
or waves pulling me under,
the taste of salt in my mouth.
I thought of all this on a visit
to the Bay of Fundy at low tide
as we climbed the rocks,

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slumbering like sheepdogs
covered in seaweed,
and explored the tidal pools
with their tiny crabs and limpets
when our host, a schoolteacher,
her cottage behind us, said,
You can touch everything here;
there’s nothing that can hurt you,
and yet somehow, as if
hearing an echo off the waves
steady as a heartbeat in the womb,
I couldn’t believe her.

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