I think since I'm reading water poems,
I'll read this old water poem of mine.
It's called Choosing.
It's a poem about swimming in a river, the Tennessee River,
right where I grew up there on a bluff above the river,
and this is about that.
It's about swimming in the river with my head back and my ears
underwater and my eyes out of the water,
so that you're aware of a whole level of knowledge, perception,
or a double level of perception.
The image I think is appeals to me
because I think it's accurate to the way I am a lot of times.
A little out of it or a little into something else.
And I had a nickname in college, it was Cloudy.
It seems fuzzy [INAUDIBLE].
So there's a dream in this poem that
comes up in the middle of it about a child.
I used to have it a lot, about a child that was in danger,
and he was crawling off a ledge, a very high ledge,
and I tried to get to him.
He was falling in slow motion.
And I couldn't get there, but my imagination
or whatever it is you dream with supplied a pile of mattresses
for the child to land on.
So there's that in here.
It's about relaxing into having children.
Choosing for Kitsu.
Floating with your head back, up to the ears and a river,
you can hear a lot of lives you didn't expect.
An outboard motor starting up beyond your sight,
somebody's sinker taps against the drum, two kids
are yelling mouthfuls, and the general flow or sound
you might make yourself, and ones you can only imagine.
Gar fish moving along the bottom,
water moccasins curling into tree roots, Chickamauga Dam
upstream imperceptibly giving way.
Half in air, half in water, your eyes awake,
your ears a dream with soundings,
the mind can bob and understand where
it is, alone on the shining surface, buoyed up
with creatures.
In such a dangerous sleep, I have created children
taking chances underwater at night,
edging with their fingers along the bluff above the river,
jumping barefooted into a cellar full of broken glass.
And one recurring child, too young to know what's risky,
on a ledge, curious only about me down here, too far away
to reach him, where he turns like a dummy falling,
lands flat on his back each night
on the mattress pile of my choice, safer in my dreams
than in his, and falling more certain
of love than the tiny fish-like fact he was when both of us
forgot he might exist, a strange bit of marine life sticking
there on its own, bringing up questions of free will
and time, and the possibilities that we broke against the motel
mirror, in plain water glasses thrown to curse and celebrate
our combining image.
Wide awake, you chose, I chose, crash following crash, not him,
not them, but to lie there accepting,
floating as we used to in river water filled
with silt and muskrats and sunken boats and boys swimming.
For nothing comes of choosing, really, in this bed
we have fallen into.
To lay back your head and listen to whatever
will be with us, to the waters, pressing only to eardrum,
for the life inside.