The Swimming Lesson

My poetry class is almost over – thank goodness because I am barely hanging on by my fingertips here, having just had a baby 11 days ago. My 11-day-old baby is deep into a growth spurt or cluster feeding or something, because it feels like she is awake all night and is eating 24/7. Which is great. The eating, not the up all night part.

ANYWAY. Class is almost over. We’re into the “revision” weeks of the course which is good, because I don’t have to start from scratch with poems anymore. I revised this one last week:

The Swimming Lesson

Light shimmers on the water
Arms shimmy indecorously
And previously chubby legs, growing stronger, flail furiously as I

Laugh with him. We’re slippery and cool.
He wriggles, slips away from me—
My fish of a son is sprouting fins before my eyes.

So I do the impossible: let go of him!
His mouth opens in an O of delight
And proud, terrifying glee bulges out his hazel eyes,

Which are so much like mine.
He is my miniature, my copycatfish.
I am flooded with overwhelming love for him. He and I

Are both buoyed by five feet of water,
And despite the thirty years between us,
We are, for the first time in his short life, seeing completely eye to eye.