With ginger determination she allowed one splendid
glance at that pure, pristine slab of water, so calm
and deceptive. You almost drowned once, she reminded
her mind, and the inner landscape
has just dried from that flood. Natural disasters
have all license to annihilate absolutely, she thought,
yet somehow amongst the wretched rubble there always remains
some sustained life, called to re-root where everything
is suddenly different.
A slippery periphery of sparkling affection steeped up
sharply from the water’s edge. She still wanted to surrender
to that exquisite tumble; in the water splash each inch
of herself into rippling circles, feel her flesh lapped and licked
by liquid love, drenched in the depths of tender
trust and satiated shared experience.
But no, no! Remember the near drowning? The flailing
gasps, the stolen oxygen, the sudden stunting of all senses
save icy numbness and paralyzing pain?
Are we meant to return
to such challenges? Would he?
