Night is thinner
on water.
We can see past the darkness
across the plain to the island
we're headed for,
while lights blink on the high, distant bridge
like visitors.
We paddle on the same side in unison
so quietly we
can almost hear the lights
and, at last, balance each other,
knowing
that neither could save the other.
We slide by an island, wooded
to the water.
The trees stir, and their foliage changes slowly
beside us
into thousands of roosting pelicans.
One ruffles its
wings and startles the air above us.
The entire island is uneasy.
Ahead
of me her hair
lifts and falls to the rhythm of paddling.
I follow
her lead and can no longer hear the sound of disease,
her archipelago
of cells now still.
On the island across the plain, we'll build
a bonfire
like a lighthouse from the only wood we could find
--some
chairs sacrificed--
to celebrate the silence of her body.
Ten
yards from the channel, shallows slow us.
Incredulously, we step
into the middle of the bay.
From the bridge a watchman looks out
of his cubicle of light
to see us walking on water.
We remind each
other that gators hate salt
and shuffle our feet to warn the stingrays,
whose
wings sound the blackness below us,
remind ourselves that we can
cross over.
Together, we are passing to an island we can see.
Returned
to the rhythm of the pull,
we aim the boat like an agreement
between
us come without a word after long struggle.
She bends to the work
in front of me, always ahead of me
as our prow soundlessly plows
the island sand,
balancing as she has throughout two-year's passage
--the
whistle above, the barbed ripple below--
traveling the plain
her
hand dangling in the warm bay, leaving a trail of light.