After the bang

He’s waiting for the cold, for the way the bubbles will tickle his cheeks, 
running upward to play around his nostrils and then shoot 
further on and he supposes his eyes will see them racing up like 
the wobbling sky is a target and, oh yes, his hat will be bobbling there
 on the surface, and might look like a head and that reminds him 
of another such fall, another time, his father’s voice cracking above him 
like the gunshot, and his brother’s face in papier-mache squish 
through the waves and his father plunging in and those big hands, 
rough and sure, dragging him out of the plugged silence that was gathering 
in his ears and then with his hat and his brother’s face merging into one, 
in this brief moment, this pause of every clock he’s ever known, 
even in this split of life and death, he thinks of the word brim as in hat
and brimming as in pond and a small smile stretches his lips 
as the water rips its ice across his calves, buttocks, shoulders and scalp.