My mother used to mutter
we’d never be safe. We must be
safer than they were.

I’m not supposed to say
how my father bought solid gold
Krugerrand coins straight

from the Denver Mint and buried them
in the backyard. Eleven steps
southwest of the swing set: Meet there if

—no, when. My mother kept
our passports up to date; that part’s
not a secret. You can’t just sit there.

We learned the word “bystander”
to learn there are no bystanders. Not
two of my brothers in the backyard

while I shoved the third. Not
in Germany. We don’t even know
who we lost there.
I do not want

to tell you about the four minutes
at sea: what the boy’s weeping father
told the cameras. No distance

from the thing itself, if you really look.
His body is on every screen.
You have to see the cavern

of his left eye socket glancing
the foam. You have to look for a flutter
in his lashes. The little shell

of his left ear opens upward,
but it doesn’t hear the rolling surf
or the persistent scratch

of a Tunisian policeman’s pencil
logging his body in a notebook
while his cheek presses into sand.