WEBVTT

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And this poem which I wrote
at about the same time

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as the last one.

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I think is about as close
to speech as I can get.

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It's called "First
Exercise," and I wrote it

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when I began swimming about
a year and a half ago.

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"First Exercise."

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"I was swimming because
I wanted to get skinny

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having passed the age of
30 when the body begins

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its gradual revenge for all
those days of inattention it's

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secretly begrudged all along.

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So I was finally paying
it my full attention,

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pulling it as I could back
and forth across the pool's

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width at the baby end,
standing after each

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lap to wait for breath and
study the excellent rhythms

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of the swimmers in the roped
lanes of the Olympic pool

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adjoining as the light
from high-leaded windows

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broke around them into
diamonds on the waves.

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And then nod to my
companions at this end, two

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impossibly vigorous
white capped old men

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and a dark woman in
a black Spandex suit

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that fit her like skin.

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I've always hated swimming
for impeccable reasons,

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especially since I'm nearly
blind without my contact

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lenses.

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And I didn't understand
that the new goggles

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I bought for my
new regimen did not

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mean I could keep my lenses
in and see new thing.

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So from one of my fancy
underwater racing turns,

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I came up without them,
and stood, and looked,

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and felt the rush of
panic into my chest.

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That disbelief when
suddenly there's

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a terrible cut across your
face or someone loved is dead.

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Of course, after a
moment, I could think:

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it's only my contact lenses.

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But still I dived for
them again and again,

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trying to hold myself under
to pet the tile with my palms.

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And later as I walked home,
the world a blur of dull color

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run together, I thought
of my friend diving

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at dusk in a pond
for his lost daughter

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and what came to him
when his hands sunk

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in the cold mud at the bottom."

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