The Innisfree Poetry Journal
www.innisfreepoetry.org
by James C. Hopkins
the blue door
having passed through the blue door of the pool's deepest end we hover in its turquoise room. in these liquid moments, suspended in the glistening, we abandon our sciences and selves.
we sink or rise with the prize of breath, give way to the gentle horizontal. we encounter our new bodies in stroke and ripple, and converse in murmur and eep.
the kindness of water is its closeness to death, and the drowning that we don't have to do. the truth of water is in its sending us sunward, back up through the glittering blue door. we hold tight to the edge with our fingertips– a momentary warming of the skin. but the towel stays folded, the lawn chair empty. we breathe, and let go again. night heron tonight, in the marina, the river is like a mirror. the powerboats lie still on black water. not a breath. not a ripple. no sound. sometimes this shadowy, floating world is held together by dream. in the moment where rising meets falling the seam becomes almost intangible. a night heron perched on a wooden piling cocks her head as i pass. i wave my hand in the air like a wand, but she doesn't desert her post. a movement, a shadow, has caught her eye— something drifting into the light. she folds her wings to pierce the dark surface, and drops out of sight.
Copyright 2006-2012 by Cook Communication
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