The dive starts
on the board….
something Steve
often said,
or Rub some dirt
in it, Princess,
when in his lesser
inscrutable mood;
Steve of the hair gel,
and whistle, a man
who was her
diving coach,
who never seemed
to like her much.
Which was odd,
given, objectively,
her admirable discipline,
and natural gifts,
the years and years
of practice, and the long
row of golden
trophies she won
for his team. The girl
she was then,
confused, partly
feral, like the outdoor
cat you feed,
when you remember
to, but won’t allow
to come inside….
She’s thinking of Steve
now, many years
later, while swimming
naked in her wealthy
landlord’s pool. Or
“grotto,” to call it
properly, an ugly,
Italian word for
something lovely,
ringed, as it is,
with red hibiscus;
white lights
in the mimosa trees
draping their blurry
pearls along
the water’s skin.
It’s 3 am,
which seemed
the safest time for
this experiment,
in which she’s turned
her strange and aging
body loose. Once,
a man she loved
observed, You’re
the kind of woman
who feels embarrassed
just standing in
a room alone,
a comment, like him,
two parts ill spirited,
and one perceptive.
But this night she’s
dropped her robe,
come here to be
the kind of woman
who swims naked
without asking
for permission, risking
a stray neighbor
getting the full gander,
buoyed by saltwater;
all the tough and sag
of her softened by
this moonlight’s near-
sighted courtesy.
Look at her: how
the woman is floating,
while trying to recall
the exact last
moment of her girlhood—
where she was,
what she was doing—
when she finally
learned what she’d
been taught: to hate
this fleshy sack
of boring anecdotes
and moles she’s lived
inside so long,
nemesis without
a zipper for escape.
A pearl is the oyster’s
autobiography,
Fellini said. How
clean and weightless
the dive returns
to the woman now;
climbing the high
metal ladder, then
launching herself,
no fear, no notion
of self-preservation,
the arc of her
trajectory pretty
as any arrow’s
in St. Sebastian’s
side. How keen
that girl, and sleek,
tumbling more
gorgeous than two
hawks courting
in a dead drop.
Floating, the woman
remembers this again,
how pristine she was
in pike, or tucked
tighter than a socialite, or
twisting in reverse
like a barber’s pole,
her body flying
toward its pivot,
which is, in those seconds,
the Infinite,
before each
possible outcome
tears itself away
(the woman climbing
from the water now)
like the silvery tissue
swaddling a costly
gift.
Copyright © 2020 by Erin Belieu. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 25, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.