The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Janice D. Soderling

AT THE WATER'S EDGE
 
You swirl your whittled ribcage upside down,
little swimmer.
Paddling hands open and close in anticipation.

You call underwater; your tender skin
bare as an bark-stripped tree.

Attune your seashell ears,
little swimmer,
kicking restively in the night-gorged hollow.

What I try to answer is a kind of music,
sometimes more than that, like
the cyclic swell of the tide to crescendo,
like these impotent fingers that would lull you,
stroking through taut belly-skin.

A black ocean crests under silent stars.
We are all swimmers here.


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