The Swimmer

The Swimmer

You are within the wave.

At times, like a tender babe within a mother,

At times, as the passenger in a rowboat once did,

Always within.

But you can never touch the wave.

For if you did, the wave could not exist.

A surfboard, a rowboat, an egg membrane. Whatever it may be.

Blocking or protecting the space between you and the wave,

Something, according to the primordial event, merely creates

the distance between you and the wave.

That something between you and the wave mutates,

depending on the wave—on its size, its sharpness, its salinity—

into a surfboard, a rowboat, an egg membrane.

According to your history, your tiny beginning,

and according to its shape, you change as well.

Egg membrane, rowboat, surfboard.

The irony of a collective of mutations driving change.

Yet that, which may be the most subjective,

is perhaps also the most objective.

But even when the same wave crashes,

egg membrane, rowboat, surfboard—

they take different shapes.

Each swimmer, swimmer, swimmer.

Each egg membrane, rowboat, surfboard.

Egg membrane, rowboat, surfboard.

The Swimmer