QUESTIONS OF BUOYANCY
by Kathleen McClung
The pool has no swimmers on this day,
no one ready to cross over from the shallow end,
thumbs and fingers webbed, kicking, kicking hard,
imagining, if she breathes just right,
the glamour of gold medals around her neck,
master of the butterfly.
The pool has no swimmers on this day,
no ponytailed girl in rubber bathing cap
folding her glasses beside a starfish towel,
dabbing Sea & Ski on the slope of her nose,
a carpet of tanning teenagers ahead—
blurred limbs, transistor static on hot concrete.
She got her father’s myopia, his quick-burning skin,
and knows the story by heart: how he lost a contact lens
in a Sacramento pool but somehow, palms swirling
cement floor, found his slim necessity,
pinched it like a pearl, surfaced,
triumphant, wet it with his tongue.
The pool has no swimmers,
and she wonders if she lost something small,
a crumb or a syllable, would she climb the fence,
strip away the buoyant, dive into this alluring blue,
and how deep would she go
before coming up for air?
Gyroscope Review - page 52
!