Sunday, October 31, 2010

Sylvania, Ohio 1959

It's a Brueghel painting.
As the crow flies,
the green fairways below
stretch to the vanishing point.
Dotting the rough,
oaks flourish along the edges.
Tiny men lean into golf swings,
Hunch over putters,
while within screened porches
brothers and sisters eat and
Post-war babies gurgle in strollers:
Bathers carry rattan bags to the swimming pool--

Look again.
A springboard's painted at the upper corner.
A diver soars over the three meter,
Reaching, stretching so high, the clouds and she meet in an arc.
She throws her head back towards the water,
toes pointed; the board floats inches away.  Like an arrow
she plummets ten feet straight to the drain spotted below.
Bubbles swarm as she pushes to the surface,
Victorious. Reaching perfection,
soaring, an angel, Icarus
winging towards stars, pulling,
pulling into the beyond--
But her wings don't melt.
Immortality is all she knows.


(c)Christy Lumm                         
published in Skipping Stones 2007
Mindworm Press, Chesapeake, VA

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