Swimming by Carl Phillips

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend October 26, 2015   Swimming   Carl Phillips

Some nights, I rise from the latest excuse for Why not stay awhile, usually that hour when the coyotes roam the streets as if they’ve always owned the place and had come back inspecting now for damage. But what hasn’t been damaged? History here means a history of storms rushing the trees for so long, their bowed shapes seem a kind of star— worth trusting, I mean, as in how the helmsman, steering home, knows what star to lean on. Do people, anymore, even say helmsman? Everything in waves, or at least wave-like, as when another’s suffering, being greater, displaces our own, or I understand it should, which is meant to be different, I’m sure of it, from that pleasure Lucretius speaks of, in witnessing from land a ship foundering at sea, though more and more it all seems related. I love the nights here. I love the jetty’s black ghost-finger, how it calms the harbor, how the fog hanging stranded just above the water is fog, finally, not the left-behind parts of those questions from which I half-wish I could school my mind, desperate cargo, to keep a little distance. An old map from when this place was first settled shows monsters everywhere, once the shore gives out—it can still feel like that: I dive in, and they rise like faithfulness itself, watery pallbearers heading seaward, and I the raft they steady. It seems there’s no turning back.            Copyright © 2015 by Carl Phillips. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “There’s the usual kind of swimming—as in, through water—and then there’s that swimming that the mind always seems to be doing, I find. This poem feels to me a bit like both things, the combination of thrill and fear when there’s finally no land in sight.” —Carl Phillips   Carl Phillips is the author of Reconnaissance (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015). He teaches at Washington University and lives in St. Louis, Missouri.   Photo credit: Doug Macomber Poetry by Phillips   Reconnaissance (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015) "Swimming in the Presence of Lurid Opposition" by Sawako Nakayasu "Mermaid Song" by Kim Addonizio "Diving into the Wreck" by Adrienne Rich Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038