Crossing Water / Tony Hoagland

[alwaysashipper.livejournal.com]

In late summer I swim across the lake to the stand of reeds
that grows calmly in the foot-deep water on the other side.

It is like going to a florist's shop
you have to take your clothes off to get to,

where nothing is for sale
and nothing on display

but some tall, vertical green spears,

and the small, already half-shriveled pale-purple blossoms
sprouted halfway up the sides of them.

Squatting softly in the cool, tea-colored water,
hearing my own breath move in and out,

leaning close to see the tattered, soft-edged
                                                                 purses of the flowers,
with their downward hanging cones and coppery antennae.

–This is more tenderness than I had reason to expect
from this rude life in I which I built

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