David Wagoner

In the Experimental Pool

The students didn't have to do anything 
     But lie there in the pool 
          And be paid well by the hour
For nothing, to give in to the idea
     Of nothing, with earplugs and sealed eyes,
          With tubes for feeding and waste 
And a third for breathing.  They were asked to float 
     In body-temperature water, to enjoy 
          Themselves, to think, to take it easy,
To draw their own conclusions
     About time and light, about lightness
          And heaviness, noise and silence, about touching
Or being touched.  They only had to be
     There and not make waves and be paid for as long 
         As they felt all right about it,
So they did it:	they settled down 
     And allowed themselves to be held 
          In a perfect Here and Now.  At first they planned
Schedules of days and weeks, drew calendars
     In their minds' eyes, rearranged
          And perfected programs, outlines of time and space,
And then they began to remember on purpose
     Whatever they could remember, taking pleasure
          In everything they could recall, the songs
They'd learned by heart, jingles, and nursery rhymes
     They'd only half forgotten.  They played old games
          With words, invented new games that slowly grew 
Too intricate to remember. They recollected
     People they'd known and lost, and all the people
          They'd failed to become, and then they struggled
To leave those scenes behind
     By falling asleep, but found they didn't believe
          They'd been asleep when they wakened
To the same absolute darkness.  They had more leisure
     Than they'd ever known or found
          Imaginable and felt as full
Of themselves as their warm floating skins
     Would allow.  And always somewhere
          Between the second night and the first day
Or the evening of the first or third afternoon,
     The nightmares would begin.  They'd realize
They held in their right hands
     A simple switch to tell the invisible man 
          On the edge of the pool (who was waiting for them 
To do what they were bound to do) they no longer 
     Wanted to be paid to lie in the water,
          And all would be lifted out and have their eyes
Opened, and their ears, and be allowed
     To touch their world again and taste it,
          To stand on it and balance their whole weight
In one direction and walk away in another,
     And for days after, someone they didn't know
          Would walk beside them, someone still floating
And dreaming, who wouldn't be told 
     Not to follow them everywhere, who would sit
          Beside them at lunch and dinner, who crowded them
In private and listened to everything they could say, 
     Who opened the locked doors of their bedrooms,
          Who climbed into bed with them and said good night.

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David Wagoner's Traveling Light: New and Collected Poems (University of Illinois Press, 1999) has just won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award for 2000. contents | previous | next