Immersion

I never toe-squished from a rocky shore
to wade into a river that would salvage

my muddy, sidestepping soul—
the sun’s baptismal fire plunges me

into the turquoise-tiled bliss of a gunite pool,
a state of grace fogging my goggles,

and my meditation runs long and lean,
paced by flutter kicks and concrete-grazed flip turns

as my thoughts slow-motion in cloudy sounds,
disappearing into my paint-box season

of sea-salt breezes and the Gulf of Mexico
swelling Veronese green; waves break,

with seafoam like linen cambric, and rush
toward a village of dome houses built

and decorated with coquina butterflies
gathered when I trailed their beach-bound flight.

Scooped and tossed with the swipe of each wave,
the tinier-than-penny shells ripple rainbows,

sunsets, and indigo depths, a bucketful
of wonders finer than my fingerprints.

I hear the squeaks of emerald summers
in a thousand footfalls patterning

chalk-white beaches on Santa Rosa Island
until I suddenly pop up for breath

and drown in the chlorine squeals of children
water-winging in the pool’s shallows.

Catherine Hamrick is a copywriter in the greater Atlanta area. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Blue Mountain Review, storySouth, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel: Appalachian Witness, The Ekphrastic Review, Sparks of Calliope, Vita Brevis Poetry Magazine, Willows Wept Review, and elsewhere. Find her online at https://randomstoryteller.com.