I never got a chance to thank 
those EMT’s who somehow 
got to that little Welsh village
so soon after the stroke, put 
the tube into her throat
and with what looked like 
a clear American football, squeezed
air into her lungs, though
it was 4th down and fifty
with only seconds left.

They said at the hospital 
that she was already dead,
then not, then surely by morning, 
depending on which doctor came 
into the fluorescent waiting room.

So I prayed to any god that was handy,
and especially in the little chapel, full
of Welsh Methodists, who love rugby,
the earth-bound cluster-fuck of the scrum, 
the lineout, the maul, the try.

But we were Americans, and knew 
they didn’t know about the kind of bomb 
you can catch, and they certainly 
had never heard, 
until we taught them,
about the Hail Mary,
and how, sometimes, it works.
                        

You’d think the sky this summer
would’ve run out of water,
and the local kayakers and canoeists 
evidently thought it had.
Now their bodies are being pulled 
from the caffeinated latte of the creeks 
and rivers.

Almost as dumb as when the four of us,
young sailors, thought we'd have our own Deliverance,
and with nothing but a cooler full 
of Spam, bread, and Kool-Aid, 
but no life jackets,
set sail on the river seventeen feet
above flood stage.

The first day went swimmingly,
the second only swimming
when we were snagged and tipped out
like a bad hammock.
If I hadn’t seen the seat cushion,
my boon dockers and dungarees 
would have filled, and thereby fulfilled 
my destiny, and the fairground gypsy’s forecast.

My second round was with the surf 
whose snaggle teeth of rotten pilings
wrapped me up in my stringer of fish
then put me through a rinse cycle.

Now I stick to dry land, though 
I watch all the fishing shows, 
and the weather channel
for the big-shouldered shadows,
remembering her prophecy
and the grubby deck of cards,
especially the one about death,
water, and fear.