Saving Alex
 

              This morning the trees are dripping. In the night
              the lake, its fingers grabbing hold of the bank,
              pulled itself from its bed and washed over us.

              Yesterday, a moment I thought no longer possible:
water, wind, four children on the dock. I shoo
two up the bank. A third follows. Alex,

alone, feigning fishing, hooks the dock. The wind
pushes his body into the water. He is
gone. I run dock planks, drop my body

where his body dropped, long to land on
his blond head. Under water (no wind, no light,
no fear) his body where it should be.

We emerge wet from our private baptism
(air, sun, sobbing) not who we were
dry: godfather, godson and godspirit,

a dripping trinity standing moment-
waves of what’s occurred. How we must look
rising up the slope, crossing lawn to cabin,

to young parents gasping from the party,
“Was it mine?” Alex, I will watch, as you
dog paddle, crawl, butterfly into yourself,

even if you arrive as a cannon-
baller, dunker, drowner. What guarantee
a baptism leads a soul to faith, when

one can drown in an inch of spilled moments.
An evil act doesn’t always lead to...
              A fish jumps! I look up too late

              to see more than ripples circling outward.
              No equal, opposite, inward push.
              But still the reaching. So not the reaching only.  

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"Saving Alex" was previously published in The Briar Cliff Review.  

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William Rudolph, who completed his MFA in Poetry at Vermont College, has also studied poetry under Edward Hirsch at Breadloaf and Jane Mead at The University of Iowa. His poetry has appeared in The Nebraska Review, Quarterly West, Rattle, Rosebud, The South Dakota Review and many other print publications; these are the first poems he has had published in an online journal.
 

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