A cartwheeling deadleaf crosses
the street, to a pack of fat crows
hunched by a meal, one crazy
enough to wobble next to speeding wheels
for a nibble, 'cause a corpse on the ground
is worth three in the belly.

I can't swim, but I am keen to watch
your ululating rhythm in the pool.
Your head cuts smartly through the water's skin
like scissors through a plastic film.
You inscribe that well-drawn path of constance;
the recurring graph of a heart's green screen.

That's how authentic, automatic, you swim:
by a hidden sense so palpable, so
devastating, and your deadleaf hair so
Autumnal and out of place in the new Spring,
That the wind has hidden - ashamed, outdone.