You swam all the way out

Walden Pond

You swam out all the way

Swam til you missed your breath,

Til your arms ached

And you let your body hover there

In the middle of the pond

And looked up and saw the borders

Of the forest forming

Swam til you looked down and realized

The depths beneath you

And you wondered how you got there

The space beneath you heavy, not like

An anchor

But something thick, pressing in, something you could

Choose to stand in or on, maybe,

Heavy as you felt it rise up to meet you

Your lungs still heaving

Swam til you couldn’t tell where the edges of your body

became the water,

til the edges where your skin turned to liquid didn’t matter.

In that dark heavy water, no thought, no arm or leg or lung

Only tension

Only movement and calm and weight

The nooks and crannies of the pond’s edge  were veiled in fog

But you could see to me

You swam back, all the way,

The water followed but the dark of it, the weight

Stayed in the center,

You swam to the water on the edge

where I waited, in our nook in the sun,

Our nook, our cranny, suddenly the world,

Only nooks and crannies and

Forest and sky and mist, water pressing in

Shimmering and flashing with tiny fish,

Nibbling your feet if you lingered too long.

When you stopped again the water turned to sun

As your hand lifted it into the air and forward towards my face,

Laughing

Christie Flemming