a kind of knowledge,  
the way a current 
 
disrupts dead water.  
An animate child, 
 
I was once electrocuted, 
my hands damp 
 
around the lamp’s black 
cord. Understood everything 
 
by its opposite 
or else its antecedent,  
 
the many versions 
of my brother— 
 
in health and aboard
the gurney rolling 
 
down a sterile hall, 
blue as the swell 
 
of tidal lurch. 
The machine’s hum, 
 
electric pulse charting 
his narrow boat. 
 
The brackish pull 
that sends the little cups 
 
and bright debris out 
and back and out again.