Nothing Will Be Settled By This
Up In Heaven Mother has arrived
at the Y for her morning swim.
A bathing cap clings to her
scalp-colored. She shuffles down
the stone steps till her black
regulation suit absorbs its fill.
Pushes off into breaststroke.
Slow, slowly moving through
the chemically treated blue to avoid
the growth of bacteria.
She would enjoy the water but cannot
recall the feeling. She knows that these things
had names like fluid, flux or pool.
She doesn’t need to understand them anymore.
Deftly, she rolls over onto her back and her feet
pop up, those horrors with their tracks where the
scalpels and needles tried to make her walk.
But this is heaven so even her feet are beautiful
and she can dance.
Susan Bazett