My thumb is a small boat
crossing the back of Nana’s hand
until ripples of skin
collide against knuckled dunes.
She is so sick. Can I stretch the surface
young again, reverse an ocean—
our moment already thinning, blurred
as a well-thumbed page in her hymnal?
I anchor my hand in hers
and she whispers, “Deep calls
to deep.” We are vessels of water
and bone, sinews of love brimming
over, again. She is aweigh.
Laurie Klein
“Deep Calls unto Deep,” Phil Keaggy