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The Swimming Pool
The diver was a knife that slit the surface
with the merest sliver of a splash.
Her zaftig mother was a pudding oozing
through the poolside plastic webbing.
The diver’s boyfriend was a mannequin
in bronze tan and vermillion trunks.
He ran past the mother, leapt, grabbed his knees,
and landed with a cannonball tsunami.
I was a chimera, dog’s head and walrus body,
swimming laps through the chlorine blue.
I knew the mother and the boyfriend would tire of the sun
and leave the pool to me, the diver and the indigo dusk.
The diver bounced on the board, lifted off, hinged at the hips,
straightened like a blade and sliced into the bubbles.
I stayed in my lane, scooping with my hands,
swimming toward her, away, toward her, away.
Water was our world. Water was our language.
Water was our worship. Water was our embrace.
I could be the spoon to her knife.
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Geoffrey Himes’s poetry has been published by December, Gianthology, the Loch Raven Review, Survision, January Review, Salt Lick, the Baltimore City Paper, and other publications. His poems are included in the anthologies Singing in the Dark and Poet Trees: Poetry Hiding in Plain Sight. His song lyrics have been set to music by Si Kahn, Walter Egan, Billy Kemp, Fred Koller, and others. His book on Bruce Springsteen, Born in the U.S.A., was published by Continuum Books in 2005. He has written about popular music and theater for the Washington Post, New York Times, Rolling Stone, Smithsonian Magazine, Paste, Downbeat, Sing Out, and the Nashville Scene since 1977.
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Paul Cézanne, Woman Diving into Water, 1870. Pencil, watercolor, and gouache on paper. National Museum of Wales, Wales, UK
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