Here is an earlier version of this poem (2019)
Breathing every 5
a constant rhythm
relaxed and controlled.
keep my head below
under the water
the dream for longer
wanting to surface.
breathing is needed
I lift my head up
open my mouth for
quick intake then a
immersed again deep.
thought occurs to me:
above be the dream
below reality?
my belief in an
false, a separate
fabrication? Is
body not mine but
lake’s ours together
fish milfoil swimmers
the same, longing to
forever submerged?
5 strokes at a time
am not I but we
sharing molecules
from gravity’s pull
hungry lungs’ demands
strokes
calm
I
down
in
not
But
so
and
a
plunge
A
could
and
Is
I
self,
my
the
us
all
stay
Yes.
I
joined
freed
and
This is an experiment with breathing every 5 strokes. In a future draft, I’d like to try to turn it into a contrapuntal, with both columns making sense separately and together. note: I tried this and struggled to make it work. Instead I changed the poem to this:
Submerged, 2021
Every 5 strokes I
breathe — a quick sharp in
above, a long slow
out below. A time
to dream, a place to
remember some things
forget others, a
chance to wonder: which
of these lives is true,
which false? Is above’s
separate self fiction,
below’s fluid form-
lessness fact? Are the
borders between us
made up, our skin not
sealed shut but open,
able to be passed
through, dissolved? What if
the real me is a
we not an I? Fish
swimmer water us,
all lake all longing
to stay under, sub-
merged? Yes. For 5 strokes
at a time, we are
together. Freed from
hungry lungs’ demands,
gravity’s tight tug,
land’s need to divide.