Coming Up for Air (Patty Larkin)

SONG: Coming Up for Air by Patty Larkin

BOOK: Overboard by Hank Searls

POEM: Learning to Float by April Lindner

Relax. It's like love. Keep your lips

moist and parted, let your upturned hands

unfold like water lilies, palms exposed.

Breathe deeply, slowly. Forget chlorine

and how the cement bottom was stained

blue so the water looks clear

and Caribbean. Ignore the drowned mosquitoes,

the twigs that gather in the net

of your hair. The sun is your ticket,

your narcotic, blessing your chin,

the floating islands of your knees.

Shut your eyes and give yourself

to the pulsating starfish, purple and red,

that flicker on your inner lids.

Hallucination is part of the process,

like amnesia. Forget how you learned

to swim, forget being told

Don't panic. Don't worry. Let go

of my neck. It's only water. Don't think

unless you're picturing Chagall,

his watercolors of doves and rooftops,

lovers weightless as tissue,

gravity banished, the dissolving voices

of violins and panpipes. The man's hand

circles the woman's wrist so loosely,

what moors her permits her to float,

and she rises past the water's skin,

above verandas and the tossing heads

of willows. Her one link to earth,

his light-almost reluctant-touch, is a rope

unfurling, slipping her past the horizon,

into the cloud-stirring current. This far up,

what can she do but trust he won't let go?

QUOTE: "Marriage is not a love affair. A love affair has to do with immediate personal satisfaction. Marriage is an ordeal; it means yielding, time and again. That’s why it’s a sacrament: you give up your personal simplicity to participate. And you are not giving to the other person; you are giving to the relationship. Because you are not giving to the other person, it is not impoverishing — it is life-building, life-fostering, enriching." ~ Joseph Campbell