Third Swim

Here’s what I love
about swimming:
I return to it
every few years
but never do I
improve—not my
speed, not my form.
My last lesson
around age 14.
When I get better
it’s only endurance:
adding a few laps
to the routine or
getting strong enough
to do one more lap
of freestyle.
My swimming
is to me as
my father’s guitar
to him: a life at
more or less
the same level
of skill. In my
childhood home
he practiced in
the basement
with a glass
of sherry; now it’s
his office by
the front door
while local news
plays on mute.
Other things I do
often but don’t
care to improve:
make bread,
parallel park.
I’m a good-enough
mother to my hobbies
& daily routines.
Writing too I guess:
young, I edited
fiendishly for months
but now I strike
a word here &
there, maybe
move a line but
not much more.
Or revision is
so deep in process
I hardly notice:
I write these poems
by hand at Mean Cup
across the street
from the Y, type
them some days
later, tweaking
as I go. I wrote
THE END
in sentences,
stopping now &
then to gather
& arrange, rarely
rephrasing.
I finished Eileen
Myles’ Skies
this morning, first
over toast & coffee,
then for the last
2 poems sprawled
on the couch.
They were often
in the skies
in those poems:
flying between
New York &
P-town & sometimes
the west coast
to meet lovers
& poets. The sky
right now’s more
white than gray,
a little crumpled
like a linen shirt
someone slept in.
At the start & end
of Skies a transcript
from a panel
on the topic
“Sky’s the Limit.”
The first speaker
plays a few verses
of “The Little White
Cloud That Cried”
by Johnnie Ray,
disgraced queer
pop star just
before Elvis.
The second talks
about a feeling:
“like a blowing
curtain”; the third
about space travel
& the Cape Canaveral
Museum, and so on;
the sky such a big
topic you can
approach it from
anywhere, really.
I think in your poems
water is like that:
substance through which
thought can languidly
move in any direction,
medium for making
—if not meaning—
at least form.