Body hadn't swum in the lake for days
For no good reason, the weather being
Better, the water warmer than all those days
In May and June when we jumped right in.
A kind of sickness in the face of death
That was neither death nor sickness proper
Had settled in. It was as if the gorgeous days
Were demanding a sympathetic response
That mind and self refused to give, but why
They couldn't say. They were disappointed
At the world for not communicating honestly,
That is to say, at all, beyond a few triggers
Of their own moods. It was the time
For swimming, for swimming hours at a time,
And body knew it and cried out for it while
Awareness shimmered over everything,
It seemed, skimming from water to peaks,
From book to book at the command of mind,
From contemplation at the command of self,
To basic needs at the demand of body,
A restless, perchless swift over the stand-off
Between the rest who wore their allegories
Like the shabby, high-school drama club
Hand-me-down costumes that they were.
Who were we, incompetent quartet nearing
Another bend in time, thought disgruntled
Mind for all of them, indivisible but never
Singular, sawing away at our dissonances
While locked in the leg irons of language
On this rickety dock over broken rocks
On the shore of a last month for dreaming?
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