Challenging Poetry

Family Reunion on Lake Powell

three years old.
the closest I came
to drowning.

half memories
of looking up
through water
to blue sky and bright sun
through the surface,
a big arm shooting down
to lift me up and out.

but I didn't fear it,
racing with my cousins
onto shore,
chasing beams of light
into cold, cold water,
where the shore dips down
the side of a cliff
carved by the Colorado
filled in by the dam,

suddenly too steep
to race back out,
too deep to find the surface
with too short legs.

I did not fear.
I knew Daddy was there
to pull me out again.

line count: 26
April 21: a body of water