This swimming hole I’ve known
so long.  Even my first time
here, all those years ago,
I felt it as place
I had already known.
Rhododendron flanks
the banks, poplars tower
and lean, sycamores
spread wide white arms
into dense canopy.
A mudsand beach
is steep and slick,
water deep, some
say twelve feet,
and green.

To wile away youthful
summer without end
or purpose, always
did I surface those murky
anxious depths lighter of care,
whether trouble frothed
in town or twisted
like a moccasin inside my mind,
courage would solidify as cool
beads dripped from skin,
to evaporate for a spell,
my fears.

I brought lovers here
to loaf and tan, luxurious
weekday afternoons
with the crowds at work.
Also I have swam lonely
mornings as a man forsaken.
I’ve shared with families
their Sunday picnics,
cries and caws of
chlidren learning strokes,
mothers apprehensive,
fathers on their backs afloat.
I’ve lectured with stern face
unsuspecting litterbugs
on why this place is sacred.

Even as I’ve grown
into this loose fish I am
and still discover, nothing else
delivers me from evil
like the cathartic leap
from the massive boulder,
tumbled in some ancient time
from sandstone cliffs above,
to river bank by means
of cataclysm hard to fathom.
How then, the entire gorge
must have shook and rumbled.

To stand and witness
on that rock, the flow
some fifteen feet below,
though many times I’ve jumped,
always a lump wells in my throat.
An adrenal yalp I shout
when I have flung this earthly
corpse in flight over the edge.
For a moment I am hawk
in fast descent,
a second split,
as distinct
in memory
as any.

Splash.

I am submerged,
mud turtle sinking deep
into dark fissures,
soul alive and
without measure.

Never have I dared
to find the bottom floor.
The waters there are
void of light and cold, cold.