lifeline

wedged in the top branches, rain still sighing
  to earth as a dissolute sky dissolves,
a mozambican woman turns mother,
  her water breaking loose to pool with the flood
 
licking the trunk below, a country-sized
  puddle calls forth the child whose name, the mother
vowed, would not be drowned, no matter how
  high she had to climb. my mother’s water
 
washed her bare yellow bathroom tile many
  years ago, a diluvial warning
of my struggle to arrive. we fought to
  get me out, and have been tugging at each
 
other ever since, tethered by a cord
  that simply thickens when it’s cut. we
descended then, thirsting, churning, not into
  the waters that hound the mozambican
 
mother, baying her and her baby in
  the tree, but into that enduring ocean
in which—as mother, daughter, or both—a
  woman’s only choices are drink or swim.