Old Couple Swimming
Rent from DeepDyve- Old Couple Swimming
And still they are helping each otherdown to the lake they have alwaysdog-paddled in,
an old academic whose mindis going, a hunched violinist over her headin deafness,
still they are testing the waterone more timeto feel if anyone’s going to miss them,
parking their sweatersand Velcro shoes by the cattails, lettingthe tepid shallows guide them
past the forgetful buoyof evening sun and the dock’s mossy boardsthat ignore
their splashing; their stout, spotted handsparting the water patiently now,their inflatable wings
orange as poppies keeping themlazily afloat, the black peace of weed floesbeneath them, [End Page 147]
the trout and the emerald chill of their finspaying no heed as the two of themkick their white legs
as if they were asking each negligent waveto rock them like fretful children assuring themall is well. [End Page 148]
Frannie Lindsay’s forthcoming fourth volume of poetry, Our Vanishing (Red Hen P), won the Benjamin Saltman Award. Her other titles are Mayweed (Word Works), Lamb (Perugia P), and When She Always Was (Utah State UP). She won the 2008 Missouri Review Prize and has held nea and Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowships. Her work has appeared in the Yale Review, Harvard Review, Salamander, Atlantic Monthly, Crazyhorse, Massachusetts Review, Antioch Review, Tampa Review, and many other periodicals.
