Balm

April 3 2012

I swim indoors

off-season.

Canned music

contained by concrete walls.

Kids, doing cannonballs

all kibitzing and caterwaul.

The sound, enclosed

is shrill, hard.

The light’s unnatural, but bright,

a tonic

in winter’s dark.

Well-used water

gives off

its chemical smell,

chlorine’s caustic whiff

whatever elixir

shocks it clear.

I dive head-first,

a frisson of cold

an effervescent burst.

The startling sharpness

until my goggles fog.

And the uncommon balm

of silence.

Just my heart

the pull of my arms

the surface, rhythmically breaking.

I am weightless here.

I disappear

from earth.

Which a lifeguard may notice

or not,

in her regulation singlet

flotation device

clenched tight to her chest,

as if protecting herself.

Who seems far too young

to save anyone.

To have already become

disappointed by life,

Olympic dreams

reduced to this.

Kids run on the deck

too pent-up

to resist.

She makes herself stern

tries sounding older

than she is.

So instead

they speed-walk, on tip-toe,

the letter of the law.

And she returns to watch

the grown-ups

steadily patrolling their lanes.

Swimming nowhere

back and forth

all day.