Plunge – Kate Wallace Rogers

Everydays

like this one,

I can’t wait

to find my way

around the bend,

to a lonely patch

all by myself.

I strip down,

slip down into briny

deliciousness

cool plunge under,

get to know

my own sensual self,

way below

aqualayers

I’m alive.

Euphoric green,

underwater pristine

as far as the body can see,

easy sea.

Floating fascination

release to undertow,

riptide pulls

sideways—

never return

to shore, sand, land.

Pure pleasure, that simple truth,

pervasive steadiness

s p a c e broken through,

boundaries eliminated,

blurring edges bleed,

surface tensions

loosen, I’m slippery

as seaweed.

Kate Wallace Rogers has been writing and performing poetry around Cape Cod since the late 1990’s. She is the recipient of the OCARC dune shack fellowship. A member of the Workshop for Publishing Poets led by Barbara Helfgott-Hyett, her work is forthcoming or recently appeared in Borrowed Solace, Gravel, The Wayfarer, Common Ground and elsewhere. Kate works at Truro center for the Arts and has had the honor of taking care of poet laureate, Stanley Kunitz’, fabulous garden.