This is sort of an early poem.
It goes back to a time in my life
when I wanted to become a professional swimmer.
And I taught swimming at a summer camp
for spoiled rich kids in upstate Massachusetts.
And I used to get up before Reveille
and swim a mile before breakfast.
And this is about that time.
It's written in rhyming couplets which
is I suppose my favorite form--
I don't think any poet gets very many of them in a lifetime.
I'd like to think there are a couple more coming somewhere
in the future.
This is called "Morning Swim."
"Into my empty head there come a cotton beach,
a dock where from I set out oily and nude through mist,
in chilly solitude.
There was no line, no roof, or floor
to tell the water from the air.
Night fog thick as terry cloth closed me in its fuzzy growth.
I hung my bathrobe on two pegs.
I took the lake between my legs.
Invaded and invader, I went overhand on that flat sky.
Fish twitched beneath me, quick and tame.
In their green zone they sang my name.
And in the rhythm of the swim I hummed
a two-four-time slow hymn.
I hummed, 'Abide With Me.'
The beat rose in the fine thrash of my feet, rose in the bubbles
I put out slant wise trailing through my mouth.
My bones drank water, water fell through all my doors.
I was the well that Fed the lake that met my sea in which I
sang, 'Abide With Me.'"