Lice-laden, fresh from sea, upstream
I swim unseen - disdainful of
Each biting hook or curve-clawed bear-
Under the waterfall of words
That would define me, drag me down
Their turbid stream.

I do not feed, except on words,
So slip through every shallow;
Water's weight I slide aside,
A silver blade that slivers gaps
Between the lines:

Then in their closing, leap above
Their spume, in my imagined glory,
Briefly made real, but captured only
As remembered shadow of bright light,
The way an eye remembers light
That flares, quick!
And is gone.

These words dissolve and wash away;
This end is not my ending.
I have swum safe through
And found unsullied pools
Of my beginning.