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Published
in Seam, 28, Spring 2008
Swimming
She is my History
teacher, suddenly revealed
to
be made not of stiff tweed but stretches
of
smooth flesh and black Speedo, and she treads
water
in the deep end, expecting me to fail.
The
Battle Of Passchendaele, The Beer Hall Putsch,
The
Break-Up Of The British Empire and now this,
my
very own Suez, glassy and unfathomable
as
the expression on Miss Brewster’s face.
Every
week, between classes, I listen
to
the older boys boasting about what they know:
pushing
40 and divorced, she has, they say,
given
Neil Parkin a lesson he will never forget.
For
me, there is just an initiation to water —
her
hand firm above my waist as I claw forward,
barely
breathing. She makes me watch as her legs
describe
a perfect ‘V’ under the surface.
But
when I try to remember this, shivering
in
shallowness, I see only the stuff that lies ahead
with
its horrible questions, and the woman
waiting
at the other end, ready to swallow me up.
John Mackay
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