To Learn the Basics of Fish Movement

by Kevin Merrell

Tarzan would’ve helped me—climb

one of those big sycamores on

Roosevelt Street, and stayed there

with me, watching for lions and stray dogs

while an hour (the lessons

were an hour) flowed by—

but Tarzan never made it

out of my imagination,

and I kept walking

the mile and a half

three times a week

to learn the basics of fish movement

and porpoise craft—

to a gray monolith of a

MUNICIPAL POOL over the door

in concrete capital letters,

full of snow-melt for water

with instructors

eel-agile, bronzed,

urging me to coordinate my skinny, shaking

body into kicking and paddling

in rhythm.

And oh the thermic sympathy

of sun-soaked cement

when I’d lay on the deck after efforts

were over—

then home again,

a mile and a half of relief,

past the rose-gardened, ivy-cloaked

mansions on Roosevelt Street

—the longing

to climb a sycamore for an hour

slowly evaporating like water

from a little boy’s

red towel