Swimming Under Water – poem

Walking away from home the macadam is still warm

black and sticky and the air          air          is

feeling the line of day and night as another mystery

To the end of the concrete walk

across cooled grass and over the warm stone to

the smell is sweet rotting fish and seaweed that is home, too

I leave my clothes on and swim south to the sea-thing

away from shore under water hearing my air rise

to be the ocean holding me all over in phosphorous, as eyeballs

ache, blurring the stones and the crabs scutter away.

(c)1983, 1989, 2015 – Jessan Dunn (DeCredico) Otis – 1989 American Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Great Lakes Poetry Press, Chicago, Chuck Kramer, Ed. & Publisher, p. 88.