'Buddha's Backstroke' Poem by Romella Kitchens

What were the exactitudes of your face?
I do not remember.
I only recall, we went swimming just before
the rain in a lake with fish around our
youngish bodies.
How the waters seemed to surge when the
rains began.
But, we still swam for a while, an odd
salute to someone who had recently died,
their death not improving life but
worsening it.
Swimming as natural to them once as to Sturgeon.

You clasped my hand as we walked to shore
together from the shallows.
You clasped my hand and smiled widely,
with masculinity and I wanted to make love.

I wanted to live not as an increment of time's minutes, hours, years but its wide measurement of what is earnest.

Then, sunlight slipped on a boulder and
suddenly was gone.