The Swimmer

Rock beach of chasms. A man is pale dough standing in sand. Shimmer owns his toes in a flurry of foam, then withdraws. He watches for a cue in a sky of cotton ships when a clam swallows all his theories. Running thunder into frigid arcs, he is eyeless. His arms extended, a child to his mother until his figure dispels in the motion of curved glass. Anonymous inside the texture of a shadow, deepening into aquatic blank. Deeper, his nostrils drink arrows. Deeper, his eyes open to films of green bleeding blue. He finds a secret madness like forgetting at the bottom, in granules of thick sand, in nowness totally pressurized, in the dislodging of a cornerless dream, while bubbles volley from his lips. Then he is up in the rise of brushing swirls, the sun quivering through the looking glass above. Identity pounds his lungs. Birth against the surface, he becomes the heave of wind from a glossy face. But he keeps plummeting, for a pearl that keeps changing, a luster he can't keep, a capture escaping.