At the City Pool
The signs insist on showers first. You must glisten in the lifeguard's gaze, wet tracks add verisimilitude, and your trail, like a raccoon's, ends at water.
Some faces aren't meant for goggles, Kafka's for instance. You fuss with the strap and every fourth stroke breathe and each stroke is a thought, twenty thoughts per lap.
Consider the elbow as fulcrum. Allow webs to sprout between your toes. All loops being endless and water being water, it is a good time to remember every other time.
Water, said D .H. Lawrence, is hydrogen and oxygen and a third thing mysterious but in a city pool full of kids, fourth and fifth things too not even counting the chlorine.
Wear your flip-flops in the shower. Dress in front of the mirror and slick your hair back like the Tarzan who dives from the falls to kill a crocodile that threatens Jane and Boy,
and when the man who looks 80 even with slicked hair says wasn't it great in the parking lot, you smile back as if he looks 65,
you smile as if keeping all his secrets safe, as he would do for you. Sharing -- that's what swimming buddies do-- lanes, lockers, fungi, knowledge of different strokes for different folks, of where the other sags, how the other floats.
Daniel Becker |