Back in the pool shaped like
a champagne cork

at the beginning of a new year
in a place that’s usually summer-like

in winter, though this year cool
and rainy, the old souse of a desert

imbibing the liquid candy, doing
its best to soothe its parched self.

No matter. The pool is deserted,
the water warm under the gray

overhang far more welcoming
than the drenching storms we fled

500 miles north. After dark, I step
into friendly turquoise, my mother’s

favorite shade, later to sleep beside
a cone-shaped 1950s-style lamp

like the little lights she set on
each of her girls’ dressers.

I think of the ways her colors,
her mid-century era, live on here,

as I find her breast stroking
alongside me, both of us

at home in the old motions—
breathe, pull, kick, glide—

all the way to the deep end
and back.