Following Senior Swim

As a girl, I failed to look away,
eyes helpless to the forbidden
(road kill, shattered car), at once
riveted and repelled, the steam
and hush only heightening the terror. Molten
tumbles of flesh, pin-tucked smocking of flesh,
blue webbing of capillaries, breasts
distended like cankers on a tree, or drawn
to naught like Jesus’ old wine skins.

Four decades on, I disrobe to swim,
a lumbering seal to the reed I was, and I look
away—no longer in horror.
On the slope of wear, I’m nearer
the bottom than the top. Now
the voices edge on laughter, and the flaunted
flesh looks, from where I stand wrapped
in iron-clad modesty, like freedom.