Testimony

Six feet underwater, the depth of every grave,

my mind no longer separates up from down,

rise or fall: heaven’s just another place—

if heaven is a length—between adjacent waves.

Should I name the blue that’s over me a crown?

Six feet underwater, the depth of every grave,

should I swallow all this sea, praise

its unlit symmetry, drain my lungs and drown?

Rise or fall, heaven’s just another place

to bury effigies of men you couldn’t save.

Christ, how many dead can one sky hold? Drown

me six feet underwater like the depth of every grave,

and preserve me as the golden wasp that paves

itself in amber. Preserve me in a sound,

its rise, its fall. Heaven’s just another place,

if heaven is at all, for the drowned to pollinate

their breath into the clouds, salt into the ground.

Six feet underwater is the depth of every grave,

and, if I rise or if I fall, heaven’s not a place.