“My Wife’s Swim”

You bent to pull your top, your arms so tan.
I watched you from the cliff at quarry cove.
Your bend of neck revealed, I felt like Pan,
his belly in the brush, and then you dove.
Your pointed feet were last to disappear.
Arising with a stroke, you blew out air,
driving through deepest blue, a grace like deer,
your legs like marble quavering, and bare.
And now, you’re up, on rocks made angular
by quarriers a century ago.
Around the curves that make you singular,
you work a towel along your torso’s flow.
My breathe is caught, to watch the liquid sparks
now vanish as you trace yourself in arcs.

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The featured image is “The Bathers” (detail) by Paul Gustav Fischer (1860–1934), and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.