Last Saturday, Aug 2, I swam as part of the six-person Sunrisers relay squad from Port Jefferson, NY, to Bridgeport, CT. Our team was part of the 38th Annual Swim Across the Sound. The swim raised over a half-million dollars to support St. Vincent’s cancer programs, of which our team – one of 41 to make the crossing – contributed around $11k. According to the official results, we placed 4th in the Traditional (Wet Suit Allowed) category, with a time of 6:03:24. We were also 13th overall out of 46 teams starting and 41 finishing.
Team Sunrisers
On Sunday, Aug 3, I read some poems at an Arts Fair at the Clark Library in Bethany, CT. Since my contribution was already a pretty wet thing, with me reading from Swim Poems(“Of Thirteen Minds” and “Anthropocene Swimming”) and from Sailing without Ahab(“Out of Place” and “Errors in a Book”), I figured it would work to add one more swimming lyric, which I wrote early that morning, thinking about the crossing.
Here ’tis –
In the Middle
Each straining arm reaches into nothing –
Wet salt nothing that spans the world,
Surges and white caps spawned by wind,
Tides and currents by the late summer moon.
There’s ooze below.
Invisible sea creatures
Surround and touch my body,
And nothing solid stays –
Everything flows, slides, shifts
Away from the pressure I create with
Cupped hands pulling down and along my torso.
The grey-green embrace started on a windy shore near Port Jefferson,
Heading into a north wind.
We’re in the middle now, at my first leg in the relay.
We’ve not yet crossed the imaginary state line.
My pale arms reach
As sideways seas and wind-blown currents
Slosh water into my face.
I want rhythm
And sometimes –
For a stroke or two –
I feel it.
Swimming asks me to fit my
Terrestrial body into aqueous disorder.
Sometimes I match practiced form
With the world’s dynamic surges
And there’s a feeling,
A balance,
A moment when the world’s power flows alongside my flesh,
