Patricia Behrens

Leaving Prudence Island

 (Glosa on Robert Lowell’s “Water”)

"We wished our two souls

might return like gulls

to the rock. In the end

the water was too cold for us."

We left our clothes

on rocks above the water line

skirted barnacles and entered

off the point of Prudence Island,

swam deep into Narragansett Bay

past the surf breaks and shoals,

buoyed by salt and waves.

Bodies in motion, you

and I, young daring fools,

we wished our two souls

might unite, ageless, to

live before Laurentide ice,

before the bay’s first explorers

christened it Refugio. We

dreamed ourselves spirits riding

above La Dauphine as its hull

rose and fell on Verrazzano’s

voyage, so free of time

that through the past we two still

might return like gulls

to land back on the rocks

where we had left our clothes.

We planned, like Roger Williams,

to go toward Providence, swim

past Patience Island, up

Providence River past its bend

below the city, flaunting strength.

But as we swam, our body heat dissipated

into water that waves would send

to the rock. In the end

we did not plan well for

how our strength would wane, or see

that the distance from Prudence

to Providence would be too

far, that the melding of our souls

would be cut short by the weakness

of our bodies. As our strokes

slowed and the day shaded

into night, finally, of course,

the water was too cold for us.

Patricia Behrens lives in Manhattan. She is a lawyer, a writer, and an open water swimmer.  Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming in a variety of publications, including THINK, The Healing Muse, Capsule Stories, and Hamilton Stone Review.