O but images with me then were fair:
of water lilies upon my face
& rainbow trout swimming through swirling hair:
I was handsome & sure
in the freshwater fullness of the chase
& your blood grew smooth-scaled with pleasure.

Thought I had always moved with the current
in pointedly direct cruise & thrust
but a supple decade soon coaxed me off course
& one must be called to account
for the transverse & tangential.

You referred to charts of desperate swoon
to keep me in your sights.
Plead with my Australian crawl,
pressed my breaststroke & swarthy thighs
for signal strength, for word
of the handsome one you had found
full of the buoyancy of the damned.

I could hold my breath longer then.
Driftwood of bereavements,
oft-dredged riverbed,
& difficult headwaters of care
will have had their way.
Into this rough water I am dissolved.

I will have often foamed
head to tail over your name
& deposited what I could make of you
as magnetic store in the bajada.

What Emily at four dreams possible
may she swim toward at forty.

(c) dark   30 MAR 1998

Certain animals appear to be able to orient to environmental changes for which no specific sense cells are known. Among these, magnetism is the most outstanding example. In fish, magnetic fields may well be received by electroreceptors. In insects and birds, which seem to perceive magnetic fields, no special sense cells have been implicated. The wide variety of phenomena considered as extrasensory perception in man may be based on direct influence on central-nervous elements, thus bypassing sensory input channels. (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1995)