Midland Swimmer
‘Are you asleep?’
Like a door that always opens
on the same empty closet,
the old jokey question
you can never answer ‘yes’ to
is a snap, in comparison
to ‘Where are you?’
Moving, wherever you are.
Even your stillness on the back seat takes
the bent of action, a kicking reach
through swells and drifts of afghan.
My live question mark,
are they salt or sweet, the waters
you riddle?
Asking gets me as far
as ladling water with a net.
Though I can catch your small
beached foot, and hear
soft waves of breath, the mesh
of senses isn’t fine enough
to land you now.
When you come back,
you’ll rub the sand from your eyes
and know nothing of where you’ve been.
Love is like that: the element
we breathe and move through,
untouchable and always
there.
Copyright Credit: “Midland Swimmer” © 1996 by John Reibetanz. Used by permission of Brick Books.
Source: Midland Swimmer (Brick Books, 1996)