My Love Goes Swimming

Her glistening arms lifting in easy precision
Through this alien element,
Strands of amber hair drifting severally,
Evidence a marine affinity:
In the marvelous process of loving I find myself
Loving the moving shoulder
Blade and long muscles whose lovely utility
Is quickness, not strength;
Loving the hurried gasp for breath, the abrupt
Crook of her elbow upward
That allows the small hollow below to remind me
Of its flesh-fragrant warmness;
Her feet swift aflutter beneath the surface
Lending her motion
A seeming to strive, gently compelling her
And me: her to forwardness
And me to another falling — dolce naujragio.
Her arms arch down in slow caress
Creating a kind of graceful turbulence
I am well familiar with:
And the sunlight that shatters in her wake
Surrounds her now in unearthly ardor,
Though for all her ethereal semblance
My love is only too too tangible
And this brief distance is still defeat:
Her bold body is shyly clothed
In belief that love must ultimately be
Just such intimate reticence.