swimming

Don't you just love/hate it when you're working and working on something and then you turn another page in one of the books you're reading and find that someone has already done a better job at it?

From Michele Battiste's great poem "No Swimming," from her book Ink for an Odd Cartography:

It was a form

of wishing, when I, at three, almost drowned

in the neighbor's pool, yanked out and gasping,

kicking to stay under, somehow knowing

womb and death share the same sleep and blessing.

-

I've just started the book, by the way, which is why I've called the poem great but not the book. I'm thoroughly enjoying it, though. And jesus, that cover. Black Lawrence Press sure makes some beautiful books.