In Which Panama Al and The Poet Float

When Al and I were kids,
my mom used to take us to the outskirts of town
where Jean Cocteau taught swimming lessons in his
above-ground pool. Of all his pupils, we were

the most adept floaters. The art of floating involved
craving the touch of other people with wet skin -
it was a prenatal familiarity, Al and I feeling each other
from the womb, and Cocteau catching our mistakes.

Panama Al and I practiced diving, too.
It was a way of wielding the water, floating
and diving, blanketing and slicing
with the perfect lines of our bodies,

a way of reaching the bottom of the pool
where we knew we’d find the heart of it all
beating and bleeding out next to the filter.
After the lesson was through, Cocteau waded

in just above his shoulders and floated with us
down the length of the pool on our backs,
floated with our elbows touching.
Al and I were like floating islands, me

in a bright pink tankini, he in his boxing trunks,
and Jean Cocteau was a hand moving across
the body, reading the braille of the water,
reading that one of us would find the heart one day,

that it would be me, warm in my fist,
while Panama Al tapdanced in Paris
wondering how a heart could still go on
without water.

 

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