MIDNIGHT
SWIM, PALM SPRINGS HILTON
I'm trying not to look at the young couple
kissing in the shallow water across from me.
They're trying not to look at me either,
but more out of a kind of embarrassment
for the way I've just stumbled
into their lives, but I can't stop
looking over at the girl, her slender
breasts made beautiful
by the moon and the restless,
white reflections of the water,
and then I see her face, how open
it is, how happy she is to be here,
to be away from the kids, or maybe
they're not even married, but there's
that tenderness, and although
I didn't care for him at first,
what with the long, blonde curls and the
muscles and the Gold's Gym swim suit,
there's a certain innocence about him too,
about the happy, almost embarrassed way
he keeps looking up at her, because
he's already remembering that other place,
that place that is theirs alone,
that he is hungering for like salt,
that will open up inside him like a stain
when he swims out to find her
on the darkness of the waters, and she
comes floating up to meet him
through the surface of her body.