Element: Water
In Latin, it’s a cella natatoria,
sultry room of pools where
chlorine is a needle in the nose,
this room where my son has
seen months of lessons and still
swims like a wounded bear,
where he performs his uncoordinated
non-drowning so unlike
the pale dowagers tucked into
the casings of their suits,
because when they enter the water,
then cut through the eye-
watering blue, they are all named
Grace, all residents of a realm
where they barely ripple the surface
of their lanes. It is easy to read
the natal, the emergence from
immersion, the becoming
from a mother in the naming
of this space. It is uneasy
to see how this element can unmake
a birth. In St. Albans a search
is called off, divers un-slicked
from wetsuits hung to dry
in a station, a man-made pond
cordoned off, a missing boy
found. In this natatorium, I wheedle
every Saturday as goggles
imprint their ovals around the eyes
of a boy who dives down
then crowns his way back into air,
back into the arms of his mother,
who towels dry his hair, who is
more fortunate than another.
sultry room of pools where
chlorine is a needle in the nose,
this room where my son has
seen months of lessons and still
swims like a wounded bear,
where he performs his uncoordinated
non-drowning so unlike
the pale dowagers tucked into
the casings of their suits,
because when they enter the water,
then cut through the eye-
watering blue, they are all named
Grace, all residents of a realm
where they barely ripple the surface
of their lanes. It is easy to read
the natal, the emergence from
immersion, the becoming
from a mother in the naming
of this space. It is uneasy
to see how this element can unmake
a birth. In St. Albans a search
is called off, divers un-slicked
from wetsuits hung to dry
in a station, a man-made pond
cordoned off, a missing boy
found. In this natatorium, I wheedle
every Saturday as goggles
imprint their ovals around the eyes
of a boy who dives down
then crowns his way back into air,
back into the arms of his mother,
who towels dry his hair, who is
more fortunate than another.
Sonia Greenfield is the author of two full-length collections of poetry. Letdown, released in March, was selected for the 2020 Marie Alexander Series and published by White Pine Press. Her collection, Boy With a Halo at the Farmer's Market, won the 2014 Codhill Poetry Prize and was published in 2015. Her chapbook, American Parable, won the 2017 Autumn House Press/Coal Hill Review chapbook prize. Her work has appeared in a variety of places, including in the 2018 and 2010 Best American Poetry, Antioch Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, and Willow Springs. She lives with her husband, son, and two rescue dogs in Minneapolis where she teaches at Normandale College and edits the Rise Up Review.
Art: Public Domain