Today’s snow is like that night years ago with my Dad
under the street lamp, both on our backs looking up
making angels, I not yet ten and he near sixty,
giggling together while the flakes wet our faces,
how pink his cheeks are, how deep are his eyes
in the blue of that night.
© Chagall 2015
At Palisades Park, the salt water pool,
as a little kid, I strayed too far,
into deep waters, over my head,
I began to drown.
Underwater was a beautiful turquoise,
golden with afternoon sun,
I could feel my lungs begin to burst,
I was helpless to emerge,
get above water.
Yet I still caught sight of him,
there in the world
on the other side of the diffraction,
a fun-house version of himself
in the wavy lines,
trotting along the pool’s edge,
approaching.
Then he was there underwater with me,
a torpedo coming,
black hair, floating tendrils,
blue eyes wide open
soaking up the saline,
bright, shiny,
he – surrounded by bubbles,
a latino aquaman.
I broke the surface in his grip,
a tight hug to last forever,
sound and life all about us.
The amusement park’s
closed for many years now.
I gave him wet kisses,
and reveled in the rough sandpaper of his cheek against mine,
until I fell asleep in his arms on the bus-ride home to Port Authority,
I kept saying: you saved me Dad, you saved me!
© Carlos Chagall, 2013
Alphabet City 