You put on your bathing suit.
You make sure that nothing gets wet more than it needs to.
You take a deep breath.

The cold will definitely sting.
And it does.

The first few strokes are effortless,
You know for sure that you will make it across.
But then you open your eyes underwater,
And see the blue shifting and fading
With the moonlight.
And suddenly, the lines on the floor of the pool
Start to blur.
The lines leading  you there  
Start to blur.

You can see how far everyone else has come,
But measuring your own progress,
Finding out how far you have come
From where you started to wherever you are now,
Is **** near impossible.
The water still shifts and fades,
And entices you in the
Intimacy that stretches from the earth to the moon.

For how long?
For how long will you keep kicking your legs?
For how long will you keep waving your arms about?
For how long, exactly,
Will your head come up
And breathe?

And even if you reach the end,
Even if you get out of the water;
Even though you made sure that nothing got more wet than it needed to:
Your hair will still be dripping,
Your eyes will still sting.