Letter to the Better Swimmer

Vincent Hostak

February 12, 2023

I write to you of the Lake again,

the great emptiness east of the City.

Without it, all the paths we ran

might march onward to the Michigan Dunes,

and scores of schooners, their old deckhands

would never be stranded there. 

How many more Polish bakeries

might have been planned? Your father laying

brick courses for each.

We ditched our class and went to swim

by the bare seawall near Oak and North.

Easy to conceal, we so thin

our absence would never be known.

I’d only bathed in the South’s warm bends

and when at last I plunged, 

you mocked the shape my crooked mouth made

cutting in air a soundless howl

as the cold grasp locked in.

My lips went blue as the world and you

circled inside the wake I made.

My teeth chattered; your laugh surged

as you swam out beyond the ring.

How many knots did your backstroke chart?

Did you hold a map in your mind?

The Lake color changed each time I glanced:

refraction, reflection? I missed the lesson

preferring your boundless crawl.

Vincent Hostak is a writer and media producer from Texas now living near the Front Range of Colorado south of Denver. His recently published poems are found in the journals Sonder Midwest and the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas and as a contributor to the TPA. He writes & produces the podcast: Crossings—the Refugee Experience in America