All It Is

I swim out into the middle of the lake, and

treading water with a slow scissors kick

stop

to have a look around.

From here both shores are equally indistinct,

smudged in the shadows of the late afternoon.

I am the most myself in water,

out here where I do not belong and cannot stay forever,

where it is my head alone that shows above the surface

as if that is all there is to me:

my thoughts, my hopes and dreams,

the many complicated ways in which I imagine things matter.

The miracle of my survival, though, is smaller and so simple:

The steady motion of arms and legs, flexing in and kicking out,

blood pumping tirelessly through the secret chambers of my heart,

the perfectly metered give-and-take of oxygen and its partners,

granted me as urgently as though I were an astronaut

spectacularly sustained on a billion-dollar mission,

when really, all it is, is me,

swimming out into the middle of my life

to have a look around.