Susan Smith Nash
The technique is different.
You ease in, trying not to slip on rocks,
then you feel the mud slip between your toes,
the muck and slime clinging to your feet
and the possibility of leeches
goose-fleshing you to go chest-first
into the cool, yellowish liquid,
thicker than pool water
thinner than the blood
you feel throbbing up through your chest,
your belly, your face
and while you’re catching your breath
you imagine fish swimming in parallel schools
beneath you, each layer of water
colder and darker than the one above
like memory
the surface is still warm and bright
after all, it is still happening
you’re 55 kilometers northwest of St. Petersburg
swimming in a lake not far
from the Finnish border, fairy tale mushrooms and ferns
softer than a newly-hatched chick
the kind they used to dye and sell for Easter
in the local TG&Y store in your Oklahoma home
and then just one layer down,
water like the Vermont lake where you’d dash in
swimming back and forth to the swim buoys
Quebecois French blaring from radios
and noisy boats, piloted by teenagers
laughing and throwing beer cans at you
if they noticed you at all –
a layer lower – wind warnings in flooded Arizona arroyos
canyon edges carved from orange-red Navajo sandstone;
you turn for breath and there is only water –
geology feels like that sometimes
your father’s maps are faded,
the lamp at his drafting table flickering and uncertain
and deeper, the fish are larger
the images massive, dark, and poorly defined –
a moonlit night in Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania –
you, swimming alone across a small lake,
cabin lights flanking the shore,
your classmates telling you
it was wrong to swim alone
(but you always do) –
and finally, that dark, bright Nevada day at Donner Lake –
Jane looking thin and radiant
only a year before the schizophrenia
took her nights from her days,
her days from her arm, tracked with pain
and self-lapses she called “finding God”
or simply “her religion” –
and your face
innocence and self-assurance
were the same thing those days;
she would hit & run –
you would keep swimming
The unbearable cold
makes you prefer lap-swimming
in pools these days.