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      July 31, 2018How to Swim an ElegyCraig van Rooyen

      Lo, let that night be desolate;
      let no joyful voice come therein.
      Let them curse it that curse the day,
      who are ready to rouse up leviathan.
      —Job 3:7-8

      This is a job
      for your barnacle-wrecked body.
      Grief, it turns out, is too much
      for the mind. It enervates
      the yellowed enamel of your
      ground-down molars; chafes at
      the skin sack separating your water
      from the world’s water. Keep
      your chin up. Not because
      the sympathy cards tell you to,
      but because the horizon’s gone,
      replaced by a blubberless body
      you must dive for again and again,
      as it slips and sinks—body of your body
      that you must propel to the surface
      over and over, each time discovering
      for the first time the lie of perfect form.
      Three days and three nights,
      across the Sound, afterbirth
      trailing behind, swim
      until your forehead becomes
      an open tomb. You must balance
      the weight of your old life on your nose
      until the sky disappears and you become
      a spectacle for pleasure-boaters.
      Engines throbbing, they will point
      as if the calf’s a rubber ball
      you can’t put down.
      The captain will turn on his mic:
      No one knows why. Instinct? Spirit?
      It’s almost human. This will be
      your signal. Swim closer, closer
      until the binoculars come down
      and they flee the railing,
      recognizing in your dead
      their own.

      from Poets Respond

      Craig van Rooyen

      “I wrote this poem in response to the story of the mother orca who has been swimming for more than five days in the Puget Sound with the body of her dead calf balanced on her forehead and nose.”

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