Chidago Canyon Petroglyph, Detail
Cold Water Swimmers
49 degrees in December and you grimace-squeeze
into your neoprene, switch your music on
under your cap and hit the water
as if it were a teacher you never liked.
You swim until, when you’ve almost reached
the far shore, a raging fisherman gesticulates
wildly, mouthing shouts you don’t hear
over your splashes and Mean Mr. Mustard.
How could he be so angry on such a beautiful day?
You untangle his filament from your fingers
and keep stroking—he’s given you one more reason
to swim harder, and you do until you’re back at shore
and there in the sun, a man slipping out of his rubber
layer, slinking his wetsuit down his legs.
Without thinking, you want to join him—
begin to unzip, forgetting your clothes
still in your car, while with murmurs you tiptoe
around what you already know—
you two are in this together
you cold weather swimmers,
nameless strangers of the same tribe—
you could talk for hours about the mean fisherman,
about the thrill of slapping the surface,
the rapture of a cold water swim.
______________
Carla Schwartz
Review by Jared Pearce
I like this poem as a fine description but suspect it’s also a metaphor: the swimmers are also poets who recognize others from the same tribe.