SIMON PATTON
Poetry—'The Whole Joy'
      

Every swimmer
owns that terror
she died of.

Yet still this summer
we bait the water
with her fears.

Sun, sand, sea:
how these three
symbol the mind’s joy …

What shadows them –
decease, devastation –
revolts it.

Like earth, like air,
no ocean bears
any enduring stain –

we mind her pain,
scarified, so that we can learn
the whole joy.