Learning to Swim by John Burnside

Learning to Swim
All of a sudden and mostly by surprise
was how my cousin thought it should be done,
the body unlearning its weight as it plunged to the black
of the deep end and came, at a stroke,
to the friendship of water.

Older than me, and stronger, the playground tough,
he was quick with his hands and quicker still with his tongue,
but even he took a scare, that afternoon
in the public baths, when I didn't come up for so long,
lost in the blur of the pool as he stood at the rim,

trying to seem unconcerned, but numb with the fear
that he'd killed me, the glare of his laughter
dying away in the hollows and nooks of the roof
and everything silent: the lifeguard, the swoop of a diver,
the sky in the picture-windows, naked and cold.

Now, when I swim, I remember what failed to happen:
the body I never found in the glimmer of chlorine,
the casual ascent and the gleam of my cousin's approval;
I dream of the absence I missed and the shiver of longing
that played on my skin for as long as it took me to surface;

but what I remember best is the water's answer,
the shadow it left in my blood when it let me go
and the tug in my bones that remained, like a scar, or an echo,
concealing the death I had lost, but would cherish for years
as we cherish the faces of school-friends who never grow old.