BLESSED BE YOUR SWIMMING POOL

I am delighted for you, and the man

I once was would have envied your good luck:

A swimming pool in your backyard!  In ground!

With water deep enough that diving in

Won’t cause you to dash out your brains and guts.

Those spurting apertures that I enjoyed

Invading with my fingers as a boy:  

They work with vents recycling water, no?

 I say, take that, Old Heraclitus! I

know one man who can step into the same  

water over again – all summer long!

But Heraclitus was talking about rivers

and we’re talking about your pool. We

are talking about clear water, dosed

with enough chlorine to kill algae, bacteria,

and anyone who drinks a good deal of it.

The philosopher’s river, that cannot

keep itself alive without taking on the scum

of the earth, is where they have to do their

swimming who cannot get themselves

 a pool, or get in good with the pool people,

For a dip, or a little Marco Polo. 

And don’t even get me started about

the beach crowd, so peppered and assaulted

with sand that they rinse off in the ocean, that

bastion of death, or her step sisters, the sounds,

bays and tidal straits, or any fish-filtered petri

dish left behind by the shifting of Great

Pangaea, or the occlusion of Mythic Atlantis.

Don’t get me started on folks who just managed

to crawl out of the ooze, then lounge on the

beach - daring the tide to give them back

their gills. Sun-bathe? On this dis-ozoned Orb?

Forgive me for ranting when today is

really about you and your swimming pool!

Forgive me for doing anything to

vex you as June glides into July, as

August yawns before us like a pizza oven,

and here’s me in my corduroy trousers!

Blessed be you! And blessed be your pool!

Blessed be your purifying filter!

Blessed be your shiny metal ladders!

Blessed be your bobbing thermometer!

Blessed be your timid in the shallows!

Blessed be your deep-end cannon-ballers!

Blessed be your cabana temple!

Blessed be your solemn patio!

Praise to your pool with our barbecue incense!

Praise to your pool with our tinkling ice cubes!

Let me swim in your pool, fair, fair weather friend!

Speak but pool, and I’ll be new baptized!