CATCH AND RELEASE

           (for Jesse)

My son is a fish

He swims in murky waters

He is too deep for the light

Lurking above him .

Like crinkled stars

He struggles

Against the tide,

His history -- abuse,

All that breaks a child

Like waves breaking shore.

Wounded by many hooks

My son was released

And yet, still bleeds.

The salt, it stings

He's young, should sing

But the effort

Is Herculean, like walking

Through water --

It is hard to thrive

When at five, you've died.

We took him, well-warned

Of the decoys threatening bonding

Those blood-red flags bobbing

On a tumultuous sea

But in we dove, hearts first

Not caring if we hit bottom

And bashed a head

As he was smashed

In infancy, against a wall

Shattering a shoulder

Confounding a soul,

Heart hurled, hell-ward,

Which has never calmed,

Never paused for anything since--

Be it hate, be it love.

And now my son,

His glassy eye ever-roaming

The swan-song sea,

is wary, unable to trust;

His cold blood is

Paced by predators

He wishes he were larger

Big fish eat little

And all of us, lung-ed or gilled,

Are .....Titanic.

Below him scurry the disinterested crabs

And frolic, the tiny seahorses,

Rocking back and forth

As with some Tom Thumb aboard

Silky fronds wave daintily

As he passes unseeing

Through the giant silent womb --

The quiet is a comfort, at rare times

disrupted by some ship's motor,

A different menace from

The constant din In a head impossibly thin.

Other times, if rarely, bubbling to the surface

Like misplaced lava, his outrage suddenly spews

He courses through the water

Like a microphage

Desperate to destroy

He knows not what.

On the shore above him

Plays a toddler in bright red trunks,

Ecstatic over a sea-star,

Its five points perfect, intact --

This could have been my son! ---

Had he not been banished

To a frigid sea, where he'll be caught

Over and again. and released because

He just won't do - Isn't big, or tasty enough,

Or interesting enough, not anything someone

Even a child, even himself, would wish to keep

And those who did want to, he had to shun,

The damage done. My son has a heart

But it has a hole, which cannot heal,

Because now that heart Is mutinous

Attacking what most it craves

My son is no fish out of water

But a boy out of air --!

Through chilling channels

He upstreams and down

Going nowhere, in a Sisyphean struggle

To reach the sparkling surface and leap

like a dolphin, suck greediliy on warm air

trade his tail for legs, and fins for hands

splayed like tiny supernovae, and run,

                                      ......................RUN!

--Copyright Julianza Shavin 2008