COLD WATER TROMBONE

by Mark Hennessy

When we were together,
he was in the ice-broken Potomac,
and the rescue,
and the ladder,
and he passes it again to someone else,

I'm going to play trombone
in the fourth-floor hall
outside your apartment door,
backlit by the parts of the plane
not frozen, that are burning.
He passes the ladder
again to someone else.

I have on your father's
brown pin-striped suit,
dancing bandly-legged,
treading sub-zero water,
outside your apartment door.
The trombone slides warm brass
down, down
and this time the ladder goes
untouched above the still water.