By S. E. Reid
lake-cold is its own moment,
a sleeping aquifer yawning underfoot
invisible
but we can feel it;
this water
is thousands of years old
and yet we—
finite things—
swim unaware in eternity,
dragonflies dodging
in the heavy summer stillness.
the dogs shake,
glitter flies,
fish dart away from our kicking feet,
and up high,
the humming planes look down on us
swimming breast-stroke through the blue
unable to comprehend
our quiet
small
pleasure.
About the Poem:
The little marshy lake walking-distance from our house is a hidden gem on forgotten property–a rural relic–and every year in the summer we take the dogs and go swimming there as often as we can. It’s a welcome break from the hot days, a healthy interruption of our normal routine. The lake is fed by an aquifer, and though you can’t see it, you truly can feel it as you swim over it: a strange yawn of cold from hidden depths. It is a humbling thing to know that the water holding you up is ancient and alive. A shift in perspective that I so often need.
There’s truly nothing quite like the pocket of calm created by a good swim on a buzzing summer afternoon, the surrender to something greater than ourselves, the courage to drift and sway. It’s a pleasure best captured in poetry, I think. So I wrote this one.
S.E. Reid is a freelance writer, editor, and poet living on a patch of wooded wetland in the Pacific Northwest with her craftsman husband and her two big goofball dogs, Finn and Huck. She loves to hear and tell stories about nature, history, ghosts, and God, and when not writing she loves to cook nourishing food, read widely, and tend to her vegetable garden. You can find more of her work at http://sereid.com
