Sacrament

By D. A. Gray

Fear death by water, the poet, wearing the mask 
of a fortune teller, says, which I’m thinking 
as we roll over into the canal. Sometimes 
the weirdest shit crops up like a line of verse
when your head hits the frame and water’s rising.

For a moment, the preacher’s reciting the same 
words I’ve heard in the pews. A ritual everyone 
goes through, he says -a plunge then straight back 
up -he tries to reassure me on the mechanics 

of the sacrament, which I want to protest 
as my body’s rocking backward, the idea 
that people don’t really believe in the dying
to the old life the rebirth in the new, 
just some silly thing we do, which is when I feel 
a hand grab the seatbelt and cut me loose, 
and damn, if the light blue radiance above us 
isn’t lovely, my inner voice shouts, my outer voice
fills with water, coughing, trying like hell to relax, 
to gain control of my breathing which happens
when I see all four heads above surface, 
smiling . . . . familiar . . . . different.

****

D.A. Gray is the author of the collections Overwatch (2011) and Contested Terrain (2017).  His work has appeared in The Sewanee Review, Appalachian Heritage, Wrath-Bearing Tree, Collateral, and Still: The Journal among many other journals.  Gray holds an MFA from The Sewanee School of Letters and MS from Texas A&M-Central Texas. He teaches and lives in central Texas.