Two Sonnets For Drowning

Two Sonnets for Drowning

1.

Last night I dreamt I was drowning, my arms

and hands waving to sky. This morning I

walked to work under a sky cold as steel

and my exposed forearms grew tooth-white

and numb. The moon was last night’s silver dollar.

In the dream, my forearms were all that kept

me alive, and my hands, I could breathe through

them, clutching air. I remembered the dream

as I walked, my forearms two needles of flesh.

Every day I work hard to get in my steps. Every

day I walk to work to feel free for the few minutes

between things, my face furrowed, my face tight.

I walk and remember my dreams, the moon.

I drown in the details of all I have to do.

2.

I drown in the details of all I have to do.

Is this what the dream was telling me?

Feed the family. Feed the cats. Answer emails.

Make calls. Pack backpacks. Repeat.

This morning I walked to work down the hill

into a rising cloud and painted moon.

The Kennebec was a silver birch

and my forearms were stiff as bone.

What I fear: I will be so busy thinking

of all I have to do I don’t see the morning sky,

a flat white moon on the sky’s blue plate.

What I fear: I will be so busy thinking

of all I have to do that I dream myself

into the river and drown.

//

I’ve been thinking about loss, and how we survive it. I am looking at this photo on our bookcase. . .

It is of my grandmother as a child, and her older brother Freddy, who drown when he was 16. I didn’t know of this loss until after my grandmother’s own death, when I inherited a stack of poems. The poems were written by their mother (my great grandmother), Jessie Campbell Richardson Lee. I felt an immediate connection to this woman —maybe because I also inherited her middle name — and turned several of her poems into songs. I recall hearing that she spent time in a mental hospital, which (knowing about her son’s tragic death), made perfect sense to me. What also made sense was the stack of poems. Because how else do we survive loss?

These poems were written an entire century ago, so it is a tiny miracle to me that I can sit here today and hold them in my hands. And that the words can still go straight to my heart.

The storms have been coming fast and fierce, loss after loss, and some days I am honestly just trying not to drown.

I typically send out a photo poem once a fortnight, but last week I just couldn’t. My husband’s mom (who has also been my mom for nearly 20 yrs) has been in the hospital. For mysterious reasons she is now fully paralyzed from the neck down, and is likely not long for this earth. My husband told me that he feels like he’s been treading water for far too long, barely keeping his head above water.

The to dos feel relentless and daunting. I recognize this fear of Meghan’s as my own . .

I will be so busy thinking of all I have to do that I dream myself into the river and drown.

I am not even a strong swimmer. Which sends my thoughts back to my own grandmother (the little girl in the photo) and how she would float for hours in rivers, ponds, oceans. Was she using water as a means of connecting to her lost brother? Or was floating simply her beautiful way of not drowning in her own losses and to dos?

I have been telling myself I need to be a stronger swimmer, but I wonder. In order to keep from drowning, is it actually more important to learn how to float?

* I am very aware that Meghan is the proper writer in this collaboration, and I am the photographer, yet here I am writing. I find writing incredibly challenging and yet therapeutic. I just had to look up how to spell therapeutic, because I was so far off spell correct wasn’t working. Also, all the grammar and punctuation I’m using . . guesses. I have dreams of taking a writing course and learning how to do it properly, but for now, my apologies to the writers out there. Know that I know that I don’t know.

xoxo,

Eliza

for more of Meghan’s award winning poetry - Meghan Sterling

for more of my photography - Eliza Bell Photography