Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘swimming’

Opposite Sides

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 13, 2025| Leave a Comment »

If you were in Europe and I were in Boston,
it would take eighty days to swim to you.
Sometimes it feels as if you are in England
and I’m standing on the Atlantic’s opposite shore.
Sometimes it’s all I can do to dip my toes in the water.
Sometimes I swim out till I start to fear
what swims with me. Always I turn back.
This time, I want to swim. Want to swim eighty days
if that’s what it takes, regardless how big the waves.
Want to swim eighty days no matter how cold.
Though the waves are big as our country.
Though I am exhausted and afraid of what I might find
on the shores of you. What I long to find: you,
swimming toward me. Want to meet you
at forty days, both of us ungrounded,
both of us vulnerable, both of us ready
to swim toward safety together.

Read Full Post »

One Momentary

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 19, 2024| 6 Comments »


 
 
running barefoot
past the end of the pier—
before the splash, flight  

Read Full Post »

Time Travel

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 16, 2024| 6 Comments »


 
Slipping alone into the pond is like slipping
deeper into the world—how alive every
inch of skin is then—as if I’ve slipped
through an hour glass and
swum into the timeless
self
and my father is here, my
son is here and in half an hour
I live a lifetime surrounded by blue
damselflies, opening to the bluing sky and
goodbye is not a word I know, only hello, hello, hello.

Read Full Post »

Wilding

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 5, 2023| 2 Comments »


 for Corinne
 
It is always near-freezing,
this high alpine lake where
we slide into oddly blue water,

and bare strangled sounds
tear from our throats
as if our own wildness

is shredding through
manicured versions of self.
I crave it, this scraping away

of everything that isn’t
limb-thrash and lung-gasp
and skin-scream and heart-bang

and wild uncontrollable breathing,
crave the tingling after,
the feral laughter, the way

the world slips more deeply into us
when we dare to slip
more deeply into the world.

Read Full Post »

Doing Water Aerobics in the Senior Living Community with Janie Bird

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on June 20, 2023| 6 Comments »

She is over nine decades old,
this woman playing Pitbull
and Taylor Swift. Now run,
she says, and we do our best
to get somewhere by going nowhere
in the turquoise pool.
And she smiles as she tells us
to crisscross our arms, palms facing in,
to scissor our legs as if we are skiing,
to work harder, to make it our best.
I laugh like a child because it’s fun,
this hour when we play in the water,
frisky as ducklings, tender as saplings
inside old trunks, joyful
as old women who remember
how good it feels to be buoyant
as geese, resilient as ourselves.

Read Full Post »

Why I Take Deep Breaths

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 25, 2021| 6 Comments »




In this deep sea of grief,
it is hard to trust
my own buoyancy—
great waves break on me,
take my breath away,
I’m submerged by loss,
yet with so little effort
I rise. Just by being alive,
I rise. So I splutter.
So I’m graceless.
So I cannot see the shore.
But my friend reminds me,
there’s no way
that I can do this wrong.
So I let myself be carried
by currents unknown,
and each time I breathe—
I feel myself rise.
With so little effort,
I rise.

Read Full Post »

When I Need to Remember

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on July 10, 2021| Leave a Comment »




Tucked in my mind’s back pocket
is that evening when I ran full speed
off the end of the pier

and leapt fully dressed into the water.
The air in my clothes buoyed me for a moment
before swirling around me like a purple bloom—

and the heavy sun was orange and low,
and the water held me, refreshed me,
stole my breath for a moment,

then gave me back the gift of my breath,
only deeper, fuller, a bloom in my body.
Oh the freedom—how easy it felt to be alive,

to be afloat, to be enwombed by the world.
Everything felt right. Everything felt yes.
Sometimes, like now, when worry polishes my thoughts,

I dip a toe into that pocket and feel the splash on my skin,
hear the water lapping against the buoys, the pier.
Sometimes, like now, I jump in and swim there

long enough that when I return to this chair, this room,
I find the faint lake scent lingering in my hair,
my face still wet.

Read Full Post »

Swimming to the Island

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on September 2, 2019| 2 Comments »

 

 

 

I didn’t intend to swim to the island.

Told myself it was just a quick slip

into the water. Told myself I would

rejoin the others soon. But the water

said yes to me. And my arms and legs

seemed to remember then

exactly what they were made for.

Sometimes we’re in service to something

more primal, a voice that says go, go,

keep going, though there’s no race,

no finish line, no prize, no spectators,

nothing but the thrill of becoming

the body’s bright verb. Feel how

the water buoys you, even as your weight

pulls you down, how it shimmers as far as

a woman can swim, how with each

stroke of your dripping arms,

the lake christens you again and again

a child of this very here.

 

 

Read Full Post »

Harriette Buys a Bikini

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 28, 2018| Leave a Comment »

 

 

After all, she is going on a cruise

and booked in the Presidential Suite.

Let her daughter laugh.

What does it matter she’s over seventy?

Harriet fingers the thin strips

of nylon, lets them fall like slippery dreams

through her hands, dreams she can catch,

dreams in her reach, dreams she

will share when she’s ready,

and world, she’s just about ready.

Read Full Post »

At the Pond

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 22, 2018| Leave a Comment »

 

 

 

It’s no Walden, but it’s cool

and the day is dust hot,

and so I ask my younger self

if she wants to go swimming,

and she grabs the hand of my older self,

and drags her to the pond.

My older self was, perhaps,

more rhetorical than sincere

when she suggested the swim,

but the younger self has already

kicked off her shoes and shrugged

out of her dress. The swallows

wheel and sweep overhead

and all along the pond’s edge

the dragonflies darn through the reeds.

What is it in us that never forgets

how to jump in, no matter

how cold, no matter who’s watching,

no matter what else

we’re supposed to do?

That is the part that is already wet

and otter slick as the older part of me

stands at the edge, still dressed,

in awe of that girl, how she

glitters in the sun, how

through chattering teeth,

she laughs, how she looks

so almost familiar.

 

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »