Swimming my lane
The bug is in my lane, drowning fast,
riding the ripples I make, picking at the water
with hopeless oars, frantically gathering loss.
My times are slipping but I still have reasons
for getting wet every day, hauling myself
up that long, black line, the monologue
I have to follow. The print keeps me straight,
a fat stemmed gift I steer to a sudden T.
I’ve seen so many— junctions, crossroads—
relapsing every twenty-five metres. All I do
is cry out, kick off, go back like moving forward,
up and down that stem, flushed by routine,
the reach and rob of constructive habit.
So I scoop the bug in the pool of my palms.
I don’t think of Anne Sexton right away.
It’s later I recall her posthumous title,
The Awful Rowing Toward God. Over again,
keeping the beat upon waves of my own
making, wrestling at daybreak above
tissues of light that shed with every stroke
I’m attempting. Holding the course, rowing
the surface, working these bags of breath.
I scooped the bug just to cup my hands
as in the days when I had faith to receive.