The Diving Platform

 

Halfway across the lake’s dark span

The diving platform glittered, somehow

Suspended on the surface of the water.

Somehow tethered in the depths.

 

It looked like an ice cube, he thought,

In a giant’s mug of poison broth.

It looked like a tablet of aspirin, as yet

Undissolved in a sick man’s gut.

 

It looked like a sturdy crust of cooked onions

Caramelized on the cooling surface of a bowl

Of soup. And it looked like a scab,

A monstrous healing, overgrowing

A wound that should have been sutured

But was left, instead, to heal messily, all on its own.

 

*

 

If he started now, he could reach it

Before he had to dress for the ceremony.

Before he had to free the rented finery

From its cloudy shroud of plastic sheets, and fit it

To his body, tightening the blood-hued

Cummerbund around his waist, and clicking

Studs and cufflinks securely into place

At neck and wrists. Before he had to scrub

 

The unworn soles of the black dress shoes

To remove the words his brother had chalked—

HELP on left and ME on right—

So when he knelt beside her to receive

The blessing, no one would know

How he really felt.

 

*

 

For generations, her family had farmed

There, in the fields watered by the pond

The diving platform anchored in. And not one

Of those persevering men could say exactly

How far down it was, how many murky feet

Of water before he’d touch the bottom.

 

So when he saw her there, all the way over

On the other side of the lake, dropping her towel

And striding straight into the water, and shallow-

Diving in, and striking out for the platform

In the middle, he understood how it would be.

That he would swim out, too, and meet her

There, and they would sit together on the platform

Anchored in the deep, cold water for awhile,

Just keeping company, drying in the sun.