Floating (Photo credit: gibsonsgolfer)

Today’s NaPoWRiMo is to write a “firsts” kind of sports poem in honour of Opening Day (baseball reference for those who are not so inclined) or a poem about another first… or not. My poem, though I hadn’t started out to, is rather a blending of a sport and a first…

Carol A. Stephen

Becoming

Slide into the water, slick, slither
away from the sides of pool.

slice the surface and pull down
against water’s tension, feet

feathering, propelling forward
a steady glide of crawl to

the other side, then touch, turn,
push off the wall and

back the way you came.

Then float, facing the ceiling,
contemplating weightlessness,

buoyancy and bounce, the way water
licks softly at your skin,

the way skin remembers.

Carol A. Stephen
April 5, 2012