Refraction

They file in, somewhat like prisoners to a bald yard

engulfed in sunshine and barbed wire.

There is no yard, but rather an enormous pool;

they are prisoners of biology alone.

Older than old, some of the women are huge

their thighs, bellies, blubbery testaments to

the lewd labor of birth; their suits

accommodate broods of lingering love.

They sidle on braided blue-veined

lumberjack legs that have held up universes

literally of their own making

their breasts swing low like cantaloupes.

Others are so thin one wonders where muscles

could hide to command such birdlike bones.

Those chests are flat as deflated rafts and,

bent like bows, they advance in mincing steps

like slow-motion arrows, like tiny children

just learning to walk.

Bathing caps protect precarious hairdos

imposed on the remains of once-thick tresses,

now but halo-like clouds

their eyes, too, are pools, staring intently

and yet curiously absent, like the look

of the profoundly preoccupied.

Their faces are the homogeneity of the ancient.

Patient, they consider the splashing antics

of youth, frolicking fishes testing their fins

the high-breasted taut-hipped teachers

agilely sliding out and in like seasoned seals,

the muscled young men fighting urges

to feast on blemish-free alabaster flesh.

They wait. They do not sit.

They clutch towels like overloved baby blankets.

Chlorine works them like memory.

I do not see them enter the water

but imagine them both ginger and eager,

as if for baptism.

I sense their slow rhythm, feel life

both entering and leaving them

the weight of air, the resilience of water

the breaking free of arthritic hips, replaced knees

degenerating disks, indefinable aches of age --

fetuses in a huge blue womb,

no longer hunched, but on their backs,

limbs splayed, looking upward, or eyes

closed as in prayer

rocking in refracted rays of anticipated stars

floating like the angels they nearly are.

Copyright Julianza Shavin 2008