The Pool

My embarrassment at his nakedness, at the pool’s edge, and my wife, with his, standing, watching— this was a freedom not given me who am more naked, less contained by my own white flesh and the ability to take quietly what comes to me. The sense of myself separate, grew a white mirror in the quiet water he breaks with his hands and feet, kicking, pulls up to land on the edge by the feet of these women who must know that for each man is a speech describes him, makes the day grow white and sure, a quietness of water in the mind, lets hang, descriptive as a risk, something for which he cannot find a means or time.