To Y. Thao
Look how you’ve carried these small bodies
across the ocean, looking for the next one
to hear the story. Look how gently you laid
these children down at the fire where stories are told.
I hear it again: how the choppers lifted
out of Saigon, cut away the desperate arms
and fled, how the Hmong fled in small groups
of families or fighters, trekking across
verdant Laos, leaving behind their ambushed
precious dead as they raced to the Mekong River
and, beyond, to the Thai camps; how one family
came to the river and lashed each adult,
each child, to a bamboo pole fit under
the arms to keep them afloat, tied
everyone together, a string of soft pearls
crossing the animal river; how the parents,
pulling the weight of that chain, began to choke
and falter, began to drown, felt the river
claim them; how the father drowned something
in himself, cut away the two youngest
and let the river take them, felt the sudden
terrible lightness of the line, swam hard
until they felt the shore under them. They made it
to the camps, where, safe and destroyed,
they could not move, as if their legs and feet
were filled with river water, muddied
and stinking. A story too heavy for parents
to carry alone, too heavy for travelers.
Look how it pours onto the page, soaking it,
running into the ink so that every story
is filled with this story. I’ve never seen
that river. I imagine it braiding itself
fast over its stones, brown with the earth
it cuts through. Look how far that river
has taken these children. I hear it again:
what it has cost to come to this fire
in this language, to let this current of words
take these children again into unknown ears.
I see again how we waded into war, that fast
red river, and cut away children.
Those tiny bodies! — the weight of ten rivers,
moving forever over our heads. Isn’t it right
that the story circle back to its source? Isn’t it we
who are drowning, wearing this necklace
of more and more stones — carrying
the watery weight of these dead, our dead,
from mother to father, to river to page.