My Neighbors' Pools
Staples, Catherine
My Neighbors' Pools The way seals ride the incline then sweep like light down the scoured white tanks, you know they're dreaming the sea. Nights like these—windless—land-locked— all I need is a...
...Numbness like a second skin, eyes gone dark as a seal's trespassing in the dead of night, out of season in my neighbors' pools...
...Through the chill waking, I grow sleek and fat in the frigid blue hold—so buoyant it seems my flutter kick is all spine...
...Arms folded close as fins, I rush the blackness headfirst, hunt the circumference of each new pool, the dark overlap of leaves in unfit corners, the chubby rounds of crabapples, spiny feel of crickets...
...Nights like these—windless—land-locked— all I need is a wintry descent in someone's pool: crescent or quadrangle, clotted with leaves or made fast with tarp...
...Never the same one twice in a fortnight, I've grown meticulous about latches and gates, the loosening of knots, the first lifted corner where the moon rides and the waters stir...
...I plummet and rise through the underside of autumn, the scarlet bleed of maple on oak, the skin-taut border of water and halflight: brightening glance at the new world's rim...
...That icy slip into otherness, chest then hips grazing the pale slopes of the pool floor...
...Catherine Staples Commonweal 1% March 26,1999...
Vol. 126 • March 1999 • No. 6
