With Emma at the Ladies-Only Swimming Pond on Hampstead Heath

In payment for those mornings at the mirror while,

                        at her

            expense, I’d started my late learning in Applied

French Braids, for all

                        the mornings afterward of Hush

            and Just stand still,

to make some small amends for every reg-

                        iment-

            ed bathtime and short-shrifted goodnight kiss,

I did as I was told for once,

                        gave up

            my map, let Emma lead us through the woods

“by instinct,” as the drunkard knew

                        the natural

            prince. We had no towels, we had

no “bathing costumes,” as the children’s novels

                        call them here, and I

            am summer’s dullest hand at un-

premeditated moves. But when

                        the coppice of sheltering boxwood

            disclosed its path and posted

rules, our wonted bows to seemliness seemed

                        poor excuse.

            The ladies in their lumpy variety lay

on their public half-acre of lawn,

                        the water

            lay in dappled shade, while Emma

in her underwear and I

                        in an ill-

            fitting borrowed suit availed us of

the breast stroke and a modified

                        crawl.

            She’s eight now. She will rather

die than do this in a year or two

                        and lobbies,

            even as we swim, to be allowed to cut

her hair. I do, dear girl, I will

                        give up

            this honey-colored metric of augmented

thirds, but not (shall we climb

                        on the raft

            for a while?) not yet.