June, First Swim

by ABIGAIL CARROLL

All the clouds long I perch on the pebbled
lip of shore winter gone but the cold of it
echoing green in the clean young waves leaning
into and into the ancient land all stone and sand
and washed up lake grass strewn in long S’s
like an emblem of the deep and I sit in the pull
of that place readied by heat and needing
to announce myself unbeholden to the frozen
months when the body is for covering
and covering my skin pale and starved for lack
of opening onto water and here I am trusting
myself to the air my shoulders and legs bare
here I am ankling into the realm of mountains
into the minnow-schooled pooling of the frigid
stream turned river turned lake turned summer