of the canyon, vision and desire spreading out beyond my fingers
to where old rocks rest.
We talk of swimsuits,
science, small anecdotes, belief,
but in the mild light of the canyon, I see nothing new.
The mouth of the river opens anew
pouring out bevies of small fish and sediment,
trying to teach me gravity and belief.
The waters move around my fingers,
and I plunge all of myself—soft body and red swimsuit—
into that river. Under the surface, I watch the river rocks rest.
After the icy water, I rest,
while you search the shore for something new,
ask questions of faith, questions of omens and swimming.
You thrust your feet into the sediment
pronouncing theories of me with your fingers.
Like the icy water, I am all disbelief.
There is concern in your voice, concern for my stubbornness, for the
depths of my disbelief.
But I rest
my fingers
on the old bruises of my knees, not hope of something new
and I thrust my feet into the sediment
refusing to consider omens in the same sentence as swimsuits.
The way I see it, I have always been swimming
over belief,
watching it rest at the bottom of the river, like sediment.
You rest,
in the belly of the canyon, and I try to make you see that this disbelief is
nothing new
that it has been tied into me forever, like my fingers.
The roaming of your words and the theories of your fingers
are swimming
around me, like something new
like something that is not disbelief.
But the river rocks rest,
under the surface of the water, and I see only sediment.
Your fingers try so hard to teach me belief
to remind me of floating and swimming, to teach me the value of rest.
But there is nothing new. I believe in sediment.