Submerge
April 6 2013

Sunday morning, the pool teems.

Small children
learning to swim,
splashing, bickering.
Gaggles of geese
taken under the wing
of earnest teen-aged teachers.

And older kids,
taunting, jostling
showing-off,
inexpertly flirting.
Launching cannonballs
dead-weight off the spring-board,
trading double dares
in the rarefied air
of the high tower.

The white fluorescent lights
are pitiless
on pale goose-bumped skin,
the muffin top, and winter paunch
of soft neglected bodies.
If only the music would stop,
piped-in, raucous pop
thumping, bouncing-off
bare concrete walls,
the glazed tiles
of the slippery deck
that glisten wetly.

And so I descend
into the peace
of unaccustomed silence;
a slow release of breath,
the brilliance
of weightlessness.
The broken surface
repairing itself,
immaculate, seamless
above me.

I remember the solitude
of summer,
when the lake
became my refuge;
the utter stillness
lurking
beneath its dark impervious surface.
Suspended there,
water in water, like in like,
my boundaries slowly softening
a cool balm.
Long enough
and I would disappear,
water-to-water
gone.

How the lake conceals its depths
beneath a dull imperfect mirror,
all the way down
to permanent darkness.
Where bottomless silt
feels like primeval mud,
oozing between my toes, billowing up
imagining slimy alien bugs.
But the pool is clear,
the bottom
deceptively near
in standard azure blue.

Until, hungry for air
I burst back up,
a spasm of chill
the weight of the world
this busy hot-house Sunday.
Its acrid smell
like a chemical burn.
The cacophony
interminable.

There is a lot of sense memory in this poem. But sound was where it began: the noise of so many people in that hard enclosed space; the unnecessary (and unpleasant) music, compounding it all. Which explains why my initial choice of title was cacophony. And it's a useful one, offering the reader a helpful sense of direction from the start. Submerged, though, is where I'd rather end up. I like its powerful with connotation of surrender, containment, and dissolution. So, in the end, that's where I choose to begin.

My thoughts turn to the incessant and omnipresent music piped-in to every public place: as if we are not to be trusted to be alone with our thoughts; as if we would find ourselves in a panic in all that psychic space.

Water is always a powerful theme. In this poem, it becomes as much an actual as a symbolic sanctuary of peace and solitude and home. The pool -- even with its exposure; its sanitized ambience; its incessant sound and penetrating light and toxic air -- provides a version of escape. While the lake, evoked in memory, seems even more welcoming; notwithstanding its hint of mystery and danger.

I wrote a very similar pool poem a few years ago, also using water and submersion as a metaphor for the sanctuary of silence. It's probably somewhere on the blog. But I refrained from checking it out: I didn't want the temptation of plagiarizing myself; I wanted to see what I could do with a fresh start. But maybe now would be a good time to contrast and compare: see if I've improved my stroke in the intervening years ...or am still just barely treading water.

...So I did check it out. I found Holding My Breath, from April 2008. I think the title says much the same as submerge: this sense of a pause, of time suspended, of expectant waiting. I see that I've repeated some images, some word choices. I fear this represents a lack of originality and a very fixed view of the world. A good poet is receptive, almost a blank slate, taking in the world with a sense of wonder and naivete. I guess I tend more toward putting things in familiar boxes, and perhaps being too judgemental. Nevertheless, I do think the recent piece is better, which is reassuring. On the other hand, I'm usually disproportionately juiced about the latest thing. So this may very well change.