By Laurel Ahlfeld
Date: 2005 Apr 12
Comment on this Work
[[2005.04.12.12.24.32298]]

At the Swimming Party

When I see her at the swimming party
she does not bother with the gossip. She stands tall
by herself, hiding the beauty of her words,
wrapped in a towel of silence. The others
strip to their suits with primal haste but she
stands still, watching with nouns and verbs
waiting patiently in her mind to be penned
between the blue of notebook lines. The others
dive into the water, filling her tongue with splashes
of adjectives and gallons of adverbs. The rhythms
of their diving bodies form stanzas all around her
while the laughter of the others sounds to her
as if it were lapping against the sides of the pool
in poetic rhymes. She carefully lays down her wrap
as the others beckon her to join in the poem
they'll never know they created. Her hand is taken
by another's, fingers locking into a beautiful contraction.
They leap together and her laughter joins in
with the rhyme of the others. Yet when she climbs out,
shimmering drops of water fall away from her as she walks-
a trail of chlorine cursive already beginning to write
the silence she wraps again within her towel.