In junior year at Riverdale
they made us read the novel
The Awakening in English class.
I don't remember much about it.
I read it so fast on the 20 bus.
A bored sensitive housewife takes
a lover, but it's not just a fuck,
it's liberty.  There was a seminal
passage about swimming and sex.
We had to dissect it on the final.
In The Swimmer, Burt Lancaster searches 
for the true meaning of Life.
He hops over a fence and dives into
the pool that belonged to Armina,
grandmother to Lola and Eve.
He was looking for something
he would never find.  All he found
was exhaustion and emptiness,
in the shallow end of the pool of Life.  
And who can forget Lancaster
as "Daddy" in Come Back 
Little Sheba, a chilling flick you've seen 
a hundred times.  Don't swim 
after eating a ham.  Don't dive 
into a waterless pool.  Don't let 
a drowning victim pull you in.  
Use a rope or pole.