While Swimming

While Swimming.

Do our spines remember

gills, our bellies

the cool ocean floor?

Can we conjure ourselves in

the cavernous deep,

amid the ocean’s unknowable chambers,

resurrect what it was we carried,

intact,

as we slithered ashore?

Swimming,

I try summoning

my watery DNA that surely lurks

somewhere.

When my arms tire,

and all too soon,

I imagine myself armless,

sleek again, fins as my rudder.

designed for just this.

Forced to the surface for air,

is my resentment simply

the helix,

rebelling from memories of diving

deeper and deeper,

skimming the vast reefs, skirting beaches,

circling islands,

until the light finally left the surface

and expectantly, resolutely,

I dive deeper

again.

Tricia McCallum

Eleuthera

February 2014.