page 129

A Swim with Mum

She abandoned the boat one summer
and began to swim
a careful, clumsy breast-stroke through the river. From the jetty
to the bridge, from the bridge to the jetty and
back again: patient as a beaver.

At twilight
the one light
is mum, swimming.

She wears a black whale-skin one-piece
and her strange pale skin,
her hair a slow-moving beacon
through the mildew of trees.

She tells me the garden looks different, is smaller
from the river
and that one never grows familiar
with the soft tongues of weed that browse the skin.

Each breath when she swims is held and let go like a precious thing,
a pushed swing:
this is the only time she is not talking.

The river that runs past the house is darker, is quieter
when mum is swimming.