photoart: ralph murre
THE WEIGHT OF THE SWIMMER
by Ronald
Baatz
Just a few weeks ago the woods were different.
Because of snow they were almost
impossible
to enter without snowshoes on. Now there is
so
much green that the sky at sunrise is strictly
a vainglorious yellow. It’s June, and already
I
look forward to summer falling to its knees,
dying in wind that has nothing worth
mentioning
except
the cold. As with the endless
sentences I speak internally, I wish the green
would
perish and once again there would be
a quiet starkness. Life is everywhere,
crowding,
pushing, killing, eating, multiplying.
In the city there are the throngs of people.
In the country it is the green, the
incalculable
wealth of leaves of every shape, accruing,
curving,
stretching. Even the wall, down
at the dam, is covered with ivy
. Swimming there this morning, we talked
about a recent drowning.
It
seems that when the ivy is grabbed,
it almost always breaks from
the weight of the swimmer.
~ first
published by Tideline Press
