Girl in the Water
Someday these strokes won’t matter,
these thin arms moving water
and water moving unto rock.
Someday the commerce
of my body—its memorized motion
and blood—will be enough.
Then this water, delinquent to me,
an enemy, will succumb as air
succumbs to bird-wing. This struggle,
too, as the shore draws near
and a waving man waits
near a forest of pine. But for now
I must wait and repeat: breathe,
push out, gather all that I can gather,
remembering: all is fluid always—
hours, the questions of strangers,
the long walk out of girlhood.
Carl Boon lives in Izmir, Turkey, where he teaches courses in American culture and literature at 9 Eylül University. His poems have appeared in many magazines, including Posit, The Maine Review, and Diagram. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Boon recently edited a volume on the sublime in American cultural studies.
