(for Terri Wolf)

I step into the warm indoor pool
as, outside, the desert dawn
begins to bloom.

I’m 500 miles from my rainy-
cold home, staying instead
with my friend who jogs down

Lane #3 every winter morning at 6.
Though I am a far-from-early gal,
I’m a when-in-Rome one,

so I rise in the deep dark,
that time just before the day
becomes day, because

shoving off from the side
of the pool in Lane #2, head
down, ready to pull and kick

and glide places my older
body in its element—
weightless and floating—

as Sir Issac’s third law
of motion attests—that
by pushing the water

with arms and feet,
the water pushes back
in an equal and opposite

direction, sending me
forward. And so life
lifts us as we progress,

as we unexpectedly,
blissfully
float.