"write a poem on wanting to swim."

I felt an old urge tear through me to jump in the water.
I hadn't been in since summer
when the whole earth bright--
a glass phial in light--
stood ready, and the blue lake too.
My only water now is tepid showers
or unwelcome rains.
I lusted for the idiot, the drunken
womb, that water, cool on the skin,
and the whole air rasped at me
like felt, and the white columns of the footbridge,
the sluggish meter of the radio-tower blinking,
the white eaves of the earth those clouds that move
tremulous and quick, how they pressed on me;
I wanted to open my mouth into the deep
body that cares nothing for my misfortune.
I want to speak humming and low
into white orbs of air, and echo.
Up here the air whines with too many unseen
radiations.
The yellow-brimmed wood keens to empty itself.