Swimmer

I paint men swimming

and study the man leaning as if to dive,

naked, arms outstretched,

tense and motionless,

all movement distilled to potential,

which is distance—the space

between where you are and what you see.

When he leaves, I go back to the easel

where I’ve painted swimmers:

one diver bent over another,

arching to water, flailing

against the jubilant waves.

They became the same as I worked,

the same man seen again and again,

the track of a body’s plunge

from dock to boat, a swimmer

becoming man after man,

motion tracked and seen.

The hands of one swimmer

almost touch the heels of the man

in front as they dive and rise,

shake cold water from their hair,

and grasp the boat, which will leave soon,

while each of these men stays

here in the purple waves;

no matter how far the boat takes the swimmer

into the slap and shock
of the open sea, this man stays

in all his faithless repetition,

a lover I’ll take again.

[based on The Bathers, by Duncan Grant, for which George Mallory posed]