Saturday in the Pool
The boy pauses at the end of the diving-board
then dives: a broad sword
cleaving the water – there is parting! And rejoining!
This is reflected back upon the ceiling
where, flippered, supine
– swimming in the cells
and water-pathways of ourselves –
we watch the gases breed: a fog of chlorine.
The boy pauses at the end of the diving-board
then dives: on board
the liberator, big-eyed airmen watch
as the cargo leaves the hatch:
the missile stabs the air
then impacts – megavolts
and gigawatts, primodial lightning bolts –
in whirlpool ripples: clouds of dust and vapour.
Saturday at the pool. A dozen forms
push. Kick. Breathe. Push. Kick. Breathe. Turn
and bring themselves along the tepid length
and breadth of the translucent element
like frogmen. Bone
and blood. Four dozen limbs
– nurses, teachers, wives, civilians –
push. Kick. Breathe. Push. Kick. Breathe. Turn.
Outside our youth is laid about the park.
Planes thread the sky like needles. No attack
presents itself. No dogfight
twists above the level of the trees. A kite
is moored in the sky. It peers,
like th boy on the diving-board, down upon the world
where we have crawled: we are raw-gilled
and live. The blood is banging in my ears.
Leontia Flynn
(in the last line, ‘live’ is the adjective, rhyming with ‘five’)
Poem as Totem 