from INSISTENT GRACE

Swimmer

I look for the lazy chartreuse light
It glides with me over the long black line

wavering up from the bottom. I fin over it,
my one good eye tracking the course. Weightless

and sleek, my arms and shoulders strong,
as good as any graced beast, safe

in my water home, easy in the blindness
of my felt world, my slippery self, easy

to believe in love here, easy here to be a body.
It’s all silver and chartreuse and if it rains,

silver in the sky, too, in the hissing surface,
the chartreuse shot through,

each drop a small electric ecstasy.
I roll my head to gulp the sharp air

and the ping ping of buckshot rain stings
the closed lid I don’t see through, but even then

I can feel the light, the shadow, the wet chartreuse
rolling below my other ear.

My slippery self -- chartreuse and silver
are my skin, the black line my belly, the rain

my own electric sky brain – ping ping ping. Easy
this way, my one good eye not even trying.