SWIMMING LATE Poem by Ed Leeflang

Past the third bank I start to float,
not tired, faintly treading water.

There is a swell, tall and lethargic,
on which some birds rise up and disappear.

On top again, I look behind me from a crest.
There is no beach. A glimmering of coast,

with here and there a light. And I go down.
The shoulder-shrugging of my sea lasts long,

with slow indifference, like the summer.
A question, silence, then a counter-question.

I do not figure in this conversation,
I go down under, feel the pull,

lid, plank, lamp, in a foaming valley,
once part of something, taken for something.

Far from my clothes I come ashore. I dress -
still shivering: too much cosmos.