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On atrophied legs, he lets his walker go
and twists to the step rails. Gripping, he must depend
on his arms to lower him to the shallow end.
Waves, warm as puppies, lap his feet, roll over
ankles, and chase through legs, his crooked knee
massaged. They jump to his chest; he wades, hands free.
He'd waited outside in the cold for help with the door.
In here, these mix-breed hydrogen-oxygen molecules
heal, a million billion miracles.
Image by Susan Rouse.
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When I saw this man at the county's aquatic center, I recalled how a swimming pool liberated me during a long recuperation from injury. Was there a poem in those memories? I filled pages with details, drew a picture, and re-read the story in John's gospel about a cripple waiting at the gate to an ancient Jacuzzi. All of those contributed to this poem a little. Yet nothing conveyed how the water made me feel until the canine simile emerged. Maybe it's unfair to put puppies in a poem -- like fishing in a barrel -- but they were right for the occasion.
The title comes from the Book of Common Prayer's liturgy for baptism, which I first heard in 1981. After speaking aloud some paragraphs about baptism, the priest suddenly sang We thank You, Almighty God, for the gift of water, lifting a silver ewer high so that sunlight glistened in the stream and the sound of water filling the bowl was drawn out. The sight, the sound, and the singing elevated the moment in the liturgy; the liturgy elevated this ordinary substance to a sacrament. I hope that some of that feeling has made its way into this poem. - WSS
