Thursday, August 20, 2009: Quoted from: Alan Lund Gard photography

The Pool

For one summer, I loved swimming.
I spent hours at the municipal pool
With my eyes open underwater.
The painted concrete at the bottom
Was smooth beneath my feet,
And the lights embedded in the walls
Shone, tiny portholes on a radiant ship.
Pallid legs and tips of feet, like felled timber
pierced my aquamarine haven here and there.
I don’t know where it went, my thirst
For water and chlorine. It passed swiftly
As a season. But the body remembers
These sensations--the desire to be submerged,
To be slowed and cooled, weightless.