Swimming Pool Moon

for all that I once was...

Swimming Pool Moon

Your blue-green eye, 
where all flooding originates,
stinking of chlorine 
and the regret of one more length unswum. 

I never trusted my legs underwater,
like balloons tied to my heavy stone body.
The crux of me sweet as a kids party
and ready to bleed out a woman’s rage,
top heavy with migraine and anxiety.

Today my arms are the strong ones.
Like a mans. While my legs float behind
my arms pull forward, rowing, reaching 
as if I picked up the scent of myself.

I drag my legs behind like complaints.
My loneliness heaped on them.
I am a raft for loneliness. 

Once I was a martial artist. 
Once I was a dancer.
Once I was a body guard. 
Once I was an artist, a metalsmith. 
Once I was a yoga teacher, an acupuncturist, a cashier in a bookshop. 
Once I was a poet.

I swim like a water-lover.
Like a moon beam.
Like a tide. 

Me and who I once was
trying so hard to touch one another. 


(first published in Channel Magazine)

(my favourite private pool)

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