the swim

homeward bound
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

a found poem

if this river
were a book
it would be dense
obscure
difficult to read

some rivers
have a brilliant clarity
translucent
quick
clear about themselves
where they are going
where they are
taking you

others
have a thickness
and opacity
as if
there were
too much type
on the page
long
and packed
with intricate
information

intimacy with the river
like other kinds of intimacy
is laced with ambiguity

with questions
of ownership
elusive and variable

it becomes
an easy thing
to imagine
yourself
a particle
in the river's
continuity

you begin
to see things
the way
the river
might see them

thinking
that all
the missteps
and wrong directions
can be corrected

[thinking]
that it is never
too late

What I recall most
about the September swim
three years ago
was how
something
in the strength
of the river
was oddly reassuring



Found in Akiko Busch's piece Just beneath the surface in today's New York Times Sunday Magazine