I dreamed Mateo was a stingray

asleep on the frayed blue blanket of our childhood.

His slowly undulating wings spread,

the ripple of a tired child. You reach

to sooth, sudden waves

spill shock into your hand—

no longer a boy, he strikes

like a preying bird. As you hold your child

I hear the gulls off the Berkeley pier scream

when we are four, and running

towards a fisherman who pulls a strange

muscular bird from the suck of waves;

a beer in one hand, fishing pole in the other,

a grounding rod for this beached lightning.

The sharp arc of line that sought a fish

finds a dark light. He reaches to break

the hook out and finds shock instead.

I see the dark wings limned

in green glow, a mermaid’s bird flown

from her hunting glove.

Smooth, rippling child who flaps his wings

and brings himself alight for one wild instant,

his love flung out and kissing the fisherman

like an overwrought son.

We step forward as one, as sisters,

to try to clasp this bright child of the ocean

and wrest him from the sea onto hard land.