Pools have been a constant in my life.
What a blessing, as a child, to spend nearly every summer day at the pool! (What amazing affordable daycare the pool provided!)
I remember with vivid details every pool in every city in every phase of my life. There was even a (very brief) time when I was an open water swimmer, and I remember those two lakes, as well.
I no longer swim a mile with confident, snappy flip turns, trying to beat my own record time. I’m in the phase where the gentle whole-body movement and the controlled breathing at a leisurely pace is all I need.
What a blessing, at this end of adulthood, to still have a pool in my life! (Although you can imagine my irritation yesterday when I got to the health club and the pool was closed because the pump was down…)
The Poetry Sisters wrote monotetras this month. Lots of rules about syllables and rhymes, but fun!
Here’s what the rest of the Poetry Sisters came up with this month:
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Sara @ Read Write Believe
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Jan has this week’s Full-o-Links, dragonfly-hat edition BONANZA known as the Poetry Friday roundup at Bookseedstudio.
A(nother) Year of Reading 
Mary Lee!
Your endings
are sending
me swimming
& trimming
my floats
into strokes.
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I love how your pool stories have me remembering my childhood at the neighborhood pool. I was on the swim team for a brief time. No swimming for me this summer and I miss the feel of the water.
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My friend, I’m catching up! Your message square (with its tidy embroidered cursive) is indeed art out into the world, this time directly into the spatters in the black corners. Your Hunters is like a funhouse echo of something I wrote once (below), and swimming yesterday I was thinking of this poem with its soothing rhythmic plateau of flow. I love it that the longest line is the action line!
The Griffin’s Grip
In hunger
my furred tail flicks,
my muscled hindquarters
set themselves tightly back
ready to spring.
In hunger
my wide wings beat,
my keen eye climbs
the sky, scans the ground,
ready to strike
On how to hunt
only my talons and claws agree.
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OK, you definitely get extra credit for “blue’ll” !!! This is so evocative and cooling and makes me think of my dad who swims a mile a day at 81. Breathe and blow indeed….
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Ah, swimming! I love your rhyme of jewel and blue’ll, so creative. I appreciate the “blessed plateau.” beautiful sentiment.
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This is so…comforting. I grew up in pools and other kinds of water in Florida, and they were mostly constant in my life (even if just for water aerobics) until about 10 years ago. I miss them. I love “Submersion got an ovation.” Ha!
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Oh, the beauty of mermaiding along, breathe and blow, breathe and blow. Swimming is the most lulling, lovely exercise in mindful drifting, and you captured it beautifully.
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Mary Lee, beautiful monotetra. I love that last stanza especially, and how you are embracing this new chapter in your swimming career–“blessed plateau” indeed.
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This is such a lovely poem! I love reflecting on something that has a repetition over our lives, yet in different ways. I had thought about the rivers I’ve known. But I’ve actually had a lot of pools in my life too. I’m so impressed by this challenging form!
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I love your blue’ll in there and the pace of the last stanza-oh how I’d like some… Enjoy, thanks!
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I love the last stanza here. It is how I swim these days. I appreciate the slow, measured strokes much more than the frantic days of racing. I love that this poem provoked memories for so many.
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I’ve never been on a swim team or swam competitively, but I love swimming and feeling immersed and free in a body of water. I love in your poem how you measure life in pools, even today, “each different, yet each a jewel.” The emotion you feel comes through to this reader.
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Swimming back to share my awe of your lifelong dedication to the wet blue wonder of what seems like the magic of our bodies being able to lay atop water, or slice through it & renew our bodies, so much the better for the immersion. This is a wonderful, continuing achievement & rewarding habit, beyond this agile & entertaining poem, in perfect form, commemorating it.
Wishing you an ocean of more splashes, Mary Lee!
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