THE SWIM

The pool’s pure Hockney – cool, sapphire and super-real. Virginia creeper blots the retaining wall. Roses and walnuts in the thorny burr and great leaf-spattered trees. A cat stretches in the grass, tumbles into its fur. I’d like to go on filling space like that. Be butterfly. Bird. An acrobat. But there are lengths to kill between one hard edge and the other, back and forward, breaststroke, crawl.