For My Wife Poem by Gregory Orr

In a former life, you
must have been a seal
or so we supposed,
so immune you were
to the coldest water.
Your hair was longer
then and, when you rose
from a dive, slicked
back and sleek
as seal fur along
the line of your skull.

Where did that world
go, those whole lives
we lived each day
when we first met?
It was a secret place
you showed me then—
a clearing
by a spring-fed lake.
I watched from farther
up the shore
while you shed clothes
and entered
into your element.