In which I lurk

It's #tbt! In honor of our 10th anniversary, we are celebrating our staff members by re-running their work from SWWIM Every Day's archives!

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prurient, watching sex
between bat rays,
their paired wings stirring water.
Oblivious
to anything but each other,
they float joined
from the harbor’s sand bed to its surface
with a grace
Fonteyn and Baryshnikov would envy.
How can I not project
pure liquid pleasure on them—
their rising and rolling, gentle thrash,
the long, slow synchronous glide?
How can I not imagine tenderness
when they spread their wings like eagles
coasting on a thermal
and swirl their own currents?
Until done, or alerted
by our canoe—
its aggressive whisper in the water,
its manufactured buoyancy—
they startle
and shoot away like stars.

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Susan Cohen is the author of Democracy of Fire (2022), A Different Wakeful Animal (2016), and Throat Singing (2012), as well as two chapbooks and a non-fiction book. A former journalist and contributing writer to the Washington Post Magazine, she earned an MFA from Pacific University. Her poetry and translations have appeared in 32 Poems, New Ohio Review, Poetry International, Poetry Northwest, Rattle, Prairie Schooner, Southern Humanities Review, Southern Review, Verse Daily, and many anthologies. Her honors include the Rita Dove Award, Milton Kessler Poetry Prize, Terrain.org Annual Poetry Prize, the Red Wheelbarrow Prize, and a Special Mention in the Pushcart Prizes. She lives in California. See susancohen-writer.com.