Did you drown? The swimming instructor
asks me when I panic as I float on my belly
and she is no longer holding me up. I thrash 
around like a trout on a fishing line.

If I drowned, I’d be dead, I laugh. I recall
at eight being pushed in the pool and hitting
my head and watching a child with my same
swimsuit lying on the bottom in the deep end.

The next thing I know I feel a whoosh
and I am back in my body outside of the water
and I wake up spurting water like a whale
while a teenage lifeguard straddles me.
 
Now I am eighteen working on a Wyoming
ranch, I want to learn to swim so I can
go out on a boat and swim with the dudes.
Before my next lesson, I get the chance.

I throw off my life jacket and jump
in the Snake River remembering 
the swim teacher’s instructions:
Just float and the water will hold you up.

But she lied because the water sweeps
and swirls and I’m whirling in a washing
machine that won’t stop. One second
I see shore and the next blue water.

I kick my feet and thrash my arms 
and I sink as water swishes and fills
my eyes, nose and mouth until I stop
struggling and my mind goes blank.

I float over a shore where a teenage
girl I recognize as me sprawls in the sand.
A crowd gathers and the dude ranch
foreman gives her CPR like on TV.

I lose interest as I lie on soft clouds
among the saffron yellow and magenta colors
and then I feel a tug on my suit and I am
pulled back into my body where I sit up.

You’re fine, the foreman says.
You got caught up in a whirlpool.
But as I rest, he whispers, voice shaking:
She was dead for a good five minutes.
                        

His name is Sol, our son says
as he enters our Arizona home
with the dog on a short leash,
but I hear Salt because he is white
and pure as the substance scattered
in the sea where they live in Virginia.

A rescue. Some kind of hound, 
Ben says. I see white lab head
and sleek spotted greyhound body
as he sprints across the tile floor
and lands in my lap, licking my face,
and English Pointer in the photo. 

His left leg lifts, tail stiffens
and nose points like a finger
at a covey of quail landing
on the rocks of our waterfalls
while he stands silent by the side
of our sailor son collared and leashed.

I can’t let him off the lead or he will take off,
our son says as Sol strains and sniffs
the trail where they take their daily
hike up the rocky butte he climbed
as a kid. Sol sits patiently as Ben
plucks the Cholla needles out of his paws.

The only time Sol barks is when Ben
steals his rubber duck. From the windowsill 
the dog silently stares at the mule deer
drinking at the pond and bolts
like the deer as our hand reaches
for the camera or he hears a loud bang.

As he whimpers, our son cradles his hound 
like he did his babies. Sol follows Ben
from room to room and runs from door
to door when he goes grocery shopping.
Sol is still watching at the window for Ben,
says his girlfriend a year after his death.