Swimming after Thoughts

Jay Parini

In memoriam: Robert Penn Warren

             Across the blackened pond and back again,
             he's swimming in an ether all his own;

             lap after lap, he finds the groove
             no champion of motion would approve,

             since time and distance hardly cross his mind
             except as something someone else might find

             of interest. He swims and turns, making
             his way through frogspawn, lily pads, and
             shaking

             reeds, a slow and lofty lolling stroke
             that cunningly preserves what's left to stoke

             his engines further, like a steamwheel plunging
             through its loop of light. He knows that lunging

             only breaks the arc of his full reach.
             He pulls the long, slow oar of speech,

             addressing camber-backed and copper fish;
             the minnows darken like ungathered wishes,

             flash and fade-ideas in a haze of hopes
             ungathered into syntax, sounding tropes.

             The waterbugs pluck circles round his ears
             while, overhead, a black hawk veers

222 to reappraise his slithering neck and frogs

or lanky, milk-white beast. He goes on swimming,
trolling in the green-dark glistening

silence and subtending mud where things
begin, where thoughts amass in broken rings

and surface, break to light, the brokered sound
of lost beginnings-fished for, found.