Friday poetry blogging, one day late

A friend of mine put this on the back cover of a homemade Haggaddah [Passover service] we once put together, and it's stayed with me ever since. It reminds me right now of the blogosphere at its best, especially in the last few days.

Family
by Josephine Miles

When you swim in the surf of Seal Rocks, and your family
Sits in the sand
Eating potato salad, and the undertow
Comes which takes you out away down
To loss of breath loss of play and the power of play
Holler, say
Help, help, help. Hello, they will say,
Come back here for some potato salad.

It is then that a seventeen-year-old cub
Cruising in a helicopter from Antigua,
A jackstraw expert speaking only Swedish
And remote from this area as a camel, says
Look down there, there is somebody drowning.

And it is you. You say, yes, yes, yes.
And he throws you a line.
This is what is called the brotherhood of man.