It must be said that swimming laps is a clausal activity resembling
the sentences of Proust famous for their length and the rhythm
of his breaths when reading him aloud or the swimming head turns
after each cluster of small strokes and a silent recompense of words
grows inside the cranium before the necessity of taking big breaths
comes at both ends of my lane where the body turns more deeply
and all words stop the lungs working harder to inscribe the aquatic
punctuation of each lap in a semicolon of time marking either end
of an evaporated clause my brain has Keats write his name in water
this sixth of June the Normandy invasion every lap in a cadence
of its own metaphoric words or narrative music much less painting
as the Narrator approaches the darkness of the lane and mine a life
of limited illumination from distant lamps in side walls and louvers
in the ceiling closing off daylight in my eyes for a third of a mile.