by Lillian B. Kennedy
They all rushed to the side to see him,
gripped the rail tightly.
The balance shifted;
the hull rolled up slightly
and turned them over
and out
like sand
through an hourglass waist,
all those longing arms,
the jumbled string-kicking feet
green air’s open mouths,
“oh”s bubbling,
that last astonished singing
up toward the overturned shell,
the drowning
watch.
Lillian Baker Kennedy, author of Tomorrow After Night (Bay River Press, 2003) and Notions (Pudding House, 2004), practices law and lives in an old cape bordered by wild roses in Auburn, Maine.