That Summer

/ Issue 12.3 /

Joy began with a cerulean sky
and breaths of grass, sweeter than subway odors.
My mind was playing over the warm hard runs

of Sonny Rollins on tenor sax,
in rhythm with the roll of a wooden pier,
brash kids beside me, gleaming wet in sun.

Urgent yet serene, his tones kept hidden
what I’d read of his early addiction.
Crime, jail. Overcome. No lasting harm.

Lifted, perhaps, by someone’s sturdy arms.
Savoring the single notes and lulls,
risking the wild delight of his “Gazelle,”

I knifed into the lake, seemingly tranquil,
limpid, with emerald weeds. A sudden whirl
pulled me around. I swam, steering upward,

and turned — the wrong way. Blue pain. My head
hit the deck’s underside, no space to breathe.
I thought the tide would suck me down to mud.

No, someone saw. Sturdy arms dragged me up,
changed, knowing how close bliss was to dread
and how it must have been to yell for help,

hear no sound, and scream through your horn instead.

Grace Schulman

Grace Schulman

Grace Schulman's forthcoming book is Again the Dawn: New and Selected Poems, set for November, 2022 (Turtle Point Press). She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has received the Frost Medal for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in American Poetry. Her eighth book of poems is The Marble Bed and her memoir is Strange Paradise: Portrait of a Marriage (both Turtle Point). Editor of The Poems of Marianne Moore (Viking), she is Distinguished Professor of English at Baruch College, C.U.N.Y.

Among her other honors are the Aiken Taylor Award for poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, and five Pushcart Prizes. About her poems, Harold Bloom has written, "Grace Schulman has developed into one of the permanent poets of her generation." Schulman is former director of the Poetry Center, 92nd Street Y, 1974-84, and former poetry editor of The Nation, 1971-2006.
Grace Schulman

Also by Grace Schulman (see all)

Author: Grace Schulman

Grace Schulman's forthcoming book is Again the Dawn: New and Selected Poems, set for November, 2022 (Turtle Point Press). She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has received the Frost Medal for Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in American Poetry. Her eighth book of poems is The Marble Bed and her memoir is Strange Paradise: Portrait of a Marriage (both Turtle Point). Editor of The Poems of Marianne Moore (Viking), she is Distinguished Professor of English at Baruch College, C.U.N.Y. Among her other honors are the Aiken Taylor Award for poetry, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, and five Pushcart Prizes. About her poems, Harold Bloom has written, "Grace Schulman has developed into one of the permanent poets of her generation." Schulman is former director of the Poetry Center, 92nd Street Y, 1974-84, and former poetry editor of The Nation, 1971-2006.