Dive

The sky a scalloped ceiling of dour silver,
the river chrome and lead — but my body
inside it lighter, slipping from the contours
that seal me in, sloughing off quotidian
boundaries. Each day closer to autumn,
the water grows warmer, the landscape beyond
more familiar, more unknowable.
At home in the ocean-spiked stream I dive,
miming the body's descent into summer.
Time stops with the breath, a hurtling through
green silence till the chrysalis bursts,
fire-drops spatter the wind's crosshatchings.
Over my skin, a net of taut coolness;
my salt-rinsed mouth a cavern of thirst.