Deep

I leave the doctor’s office,
blood in my underwear.
Quietly, you are over.
In the elevator,

I think about that time
I didn’t learn to swim:
emerging from the lake chin-first.
Craving scale and scope more

than I craved air. I wanted
Rand McNally to the left
of my periphery: one inch
equals one mile. Beach defined

by the key of fingernails—lengths
bridging it to my coordinates.
But I bobbed in grid-less nothing,
water and sky careening

like two rolls of aluminum foil
spooling out, and then
into, each other. Straight tamped-
down ending. No border at all.

In the hospital parking lot,
I linger near the ambulances
lurching toward announced tragedies.
Their siren lights first appear

larger than a breadbox. One block
later, they’re apple-sized,
at the tree line they fold to the breadth
of a loon’s single pupil

before receding completely.
I know again what I knew
before: grief is not deep.
Grief is all surface.