by Chuck Sperry (b 1962)
Here is the perfect poem for the end of a long July,
spent mostly reading, writing, blogging and lap swimming:
The Swimming Pool
It goes under, the cursor, whenever I place my finger
on the space bar and hold it like this for a minute.
The blue screen shimmers the way a pool’s sunlit
floor moves after the splash of a lone swimmer.
As long as this minute lasts, the season is somewhere
between July and dawn: the soundless underwater
of sandals left out overnight and garden furniture,
that will end, but could just as easily go on forever.
I could be forgiven for forgetting that it was ever there.
The pool is only still again when I take away my finger.
Unthinking, and unable to hold its breath any longer,
as much as two pages further, it comes up for air.
by Conor O’Callaghan (b 1968)
in Seatown and Earlier Poems (2000)
A note from artist Chuch Sperry: "I noted in the credit line of my poster: After Alfred Roller. The figure of the diver in my print is influenced by a figure in the work of Vienna Secessionist artist Alfred Roller, the brilliant early 20th Century graphic stylist and inventor of the free, flowing typographical fonts that inspired artist Wes Wilson to create psychedelic lettering in the 1960’s."
To be continued . . .
