Blueprint of a Swimmer

Blueprint of a Swimmer


Divers and keepers of lights and swimmers in solitary waters
                     are lonely folks, I think,
        familiar with crabs, anemones, and annelids.

               They do not fear the inky Kraken,
                nor lumpish dead-men's-fingers,
                nor the stings of the ballooning man-of-war,
                remembering, perhaps how they
                snuggled in liquid shelters
                of underwater cradles far from shore:

                up from curved secluded beaches,
                loosening minute grains of sand,
                        alive and water-borne,
                           carried on a swell
                  that never touched Gibraltar
                    or the shores of Labrador,
        penetrating whiplike the single spilling shell 
                         of a solitary swimmer
                            charting currents,
                              mapping flows 
                    fringing gulfs of smaller seas
         (of brain and blood, of mouth and tongue)
                  that never touched Nantucket   
                      nor the Gulf of Mexico.

Divers and keepers of lights and swimmers in solitary waters
                        are curious folks, I think,
       familiar with urchins, drifting jellyfish, and foam.

                 They measure origins beyond the quay:
                 the primal swimmer's tumbling rush
                 as on the crest of some great wave,
                 like otter, and like lion, out to sea.