Swimming in the Rain
by Chana Bloch

Read the automated transcript.

Swaddled and sleeved in water,
I dive to the rocky bottom and rise
as the first drops of sky

find the ocean. The waters above
meet the waters below,
the sweet and the salt,

and I’m swimming back to the beginning.
The forecasts were wrong.
Half the sky is dark.

but it keeps changing. Half the stories
I used to believe are false. Thank God
I’ve got the good sense at last

not to come in out of the rain.
The waves open
to take in the rain, and sunlight

falls from the clouds
onto the face of the deep as it did
on the first day

before the dividing began.

"Swimming in the Rain" by Chana Bloch, from SWIMMING IN THE RAIN by Chana Bloch, copyright © 2015 Autumn House Press. Used by permission of Autumn House Press.