Houdini

There is a river under this poem. It flows blue and icy And carries these lines down the page. Somewhere beneath its surface Lying chained to the silt Harry holds his breath And slowly files His fingernails into moons. He wonders who still waits at the dock If the breasts of those young girls Have developed since he sank. He thinks of his parents Of listening to the tumblers Of his mother's womb Of escaping upward out of puberty Out of the pupils in his father's eyes And those hot Wisconsin fields. He dreams of escaping From this poem Of cracking the combinations To his own body And those warm young safes Of every girl on the dock. Jiggling his chains Harry scares a carp that circles And nibbles at his feet. He feels the blue rush of the current Sweeping across his body Stripping his chains of their rust Until each link softens And glows like a tiny eel. And Harry decides to ascend. He slips with the water Through his chains And climbing over and over His own air bubbles He waves to the fish To his chains glittering And squirming in the silt. He pauses to pick a bouquet Of seaweed for the young girls on the dock. Rising He bursts the surface of this poem. He listens for shouts. He hears only the night And a buoy sloshing in the blue.