I keep trying
to get the level right
four fingers below the rim
not around four but exactly four, which is
hard to do when the weather dips
below eighty four degrees and the water steams up
toward the sun like it’s life depends
on floating off the surface
of the pool, as quickly as Icarus before
his demise, and I turn on the
hose quickly to fill back to four
fingers when the steam
decides to toughen up
and returns to the pool
with a thunderous
light show that lands
two feet from where
I was treading water, having clearly
miscalculated the number of seconds
between explosions which is
not to say I’m bad at math, I am
a strong swimmer and
I pushed it to the rim
ever since I was eight
at the Hampstead pool
when my mother called
her voice, dark
loud, “Get outta the
pool!”, decades
before the first
Blackberry
and then Apple,
it was our turn
to put in our snack bar
order of hot dogs and
squished kinnishes,
it was my life and I
pleaded for one
more swim,
as if I were a
mathematician, and
a swim, a thing that
could be measured.
Lori Polachek
August 2019
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