Calling for Help

  But Clayfeld couldn’t reconstruct
the morning when that ghostly voice first called
  for help, and his hypothesis—
based on the time he fell while fishing with his father
  from a boat when he was four—
seemed unconvincing to explain why
  water echoing
inside the shower stall could bring this
  odd hallucination on:
he’d think he’d hear the voice, say to himself,
  ”It isn’t there,” but still
he’d have to shut the shower off in order
  to be absolutely sure.
Clayfeld did not believe in extrasensory
  phenomena, and yet
he could not quite suppress a surge of fear
  that warned him the faint voice
ought to be heeded as a prophecy:
  ”Prepare yourself,” he thought
when he had turned the shower back on,
  ”some day your own son
may need rescuing.” Clayfeld had read
  one psychic claimed
he sometimes accidentally tuned in—
  as if phone wires got crossed—
upon a stranger’s life; likewise, uncannily,
  Clayfeld suspected
someone out there somewhere needed help.
  Clayfeld would dry himself,
but sweat stuck to him afterwards
  until the weird sensation
would wear off and let his clenched thoughts ease
  Into his ordinary day.
Once, Clayfeld heard the voice, turned off the shower
  as he was compelled to do,
and lo! his wife, outside the bathroom door,
  was calling him—although
“I’m leaving early, dear,” could hardly qualify
  as anybody’s cry for help.
Despite his certainty no voice was there,
  Clayfeld still heard the faint voice
call him with increasing frequency,
  and for relief, he’d raise
the water’s temperature as high as human skin
  could tolerate the heat—
as if that cry were inside his own flesh
  and might be steamed away.
Clayfeld was finishing a scaled-down statue
  of his fishing son,
his lean, unmuscled boy’s arm tightening
  in the completed instant
of the casting of a fly just as the trout
  struck, taking in the hook,
when Clayfeld thought he heard the cry again:
  the trout, it was the trout, the cry,
to his astonishment, was not a human cry,
  only a cry of wounded flesh.
Though late, Clayfeld worked on—he had to show
  that cry transformed and graceful
in the posture of a body going taut:
  he thickened the boy’s shoulders,
shaped a little bulge along his calves
  and up his moistened thighs,
retouching every artery and swell
  that shadowed through the skin,
until he realized he’d changed the boy
  almost into a man.
“So be it,” bowing to his chisel, Clayfeld said,
  leaving his studio
assuaged at dawn to take himself to bed.
  As softly as he could,
shivering in his underwear, Clayfeld
  tiptoed into their room careful
not to disturb his wife. “Daddy, is that you?”
  Evelyn called out from the deep past
her sleeping warmth contained, which Clayfeld,
  trembling, edged himself into
as still another watchful voice repeated,
  like an echo, “Is that you?”