A pale streak incises the cool early morning lake
Another,
               Then
Another;
Break the Prussian blue
Surface with the slightest feather of reflected sun.
Ashore, expecting nothing, called to the waterside
Stay instead seated on the sand
Timid observations of what comes
Swimming across this private cove.

She swims past buoys and any shouted sound
The crystalline water smooth as desire,
Dark as a lost love’s kiss.
Her movements, steady in supposed
Direction, and feel the rush of cold beneath her body
Scissoring itself to the jetty.
The sun, just awake, and yet to warm the promises of the last night,
Yawns in the haze,
Each stroke divides the mindless water into treasures of light and dark.
Shadows rumble beside me, almost indistinct from  sand and
jackstone

What thoughts are held within her efforts?
Each in an element somehow linked
In a strange pavane

She swims towards a future she fears
Desires a future of fullness , an end.
She plunges ahead in the cool lake water,
Grasping for a hold on things
Unseen, to steady her thoughts clasp.
She has the scent of direction,
Energy of goals; yet the tide’s
Against her, the undertow of waves already crashed on shore.
 
 

The undertow filled with ghosts and memories,
Her on the surface of things,
The surface of reflected light
Above and below her, Worlds
Clash in opposition,
At home in the surface of light, air,
Water.
 

In my dream wish I see her wade through the surf,
Lie naked beside me on the sand,
Lie quiet and easy,
As I begin to tell her stories
About the currents deep below us in the earth and sea.
 

Listen, sweet nymph, to the tempo of the gulls cry,
Listen to the tongues lap the shore,
Listen to the world tell us the time of mind and matter,
As they are one with us.
 

             HILD 99