These poems explore ocean swimming as ecological meditation for the Anthropocene.
We swim into the flooding of our world, knowing we cannot stop it changing.
The keywords are feeling and form.
The goal is unlearning dominion.
The abrasive element is salt.
The color is blue.
Anthropocene Swimming
Every day, like prayer or meditation,
I follow high tide into buoyancy
Where only form patterns my exertion
And only feeling blazes my life in sea.
To see, to see! says the Polish master
In a language not his own. With violence
And despair he meets me on shore astern
Before I disembark the boat from whence
He stares down, sailor to swimmer, blind
To joy’s immersion intoxication
The wet that sets me afire slips my mind —
Swimming hits skin in time of dictation.
Not words but world’s wet on body I crave
To cross with slow arms from dawn to the grave.
