The Keswick Park Pool

Lyrics

July.
The air is thick enough to drink.
Smells like chlorine and hot concrete.
Hello, old chair.

Your aluminum frame is hot enough to burn.
Your plastic webbing, sagging just so.
I know the spot.
Third one from the lifeguard stand.
No one keeps a record of who sits here.
Of the novels left face-down on the ground.
The small talk about the heat, the traffic on 285.
Just the sun, beating down.
And the shimmer off the water.

And the line for the diving board never ends.
A new kid every ten seconds.
Bare feet on the hot grip-tape.
A moment of flight.
A clean splash that the archives never heard.
Another summer that the county clerk forgot to file.
Just this blue water.
Holding it all.

Over there, under the picnic shelter.
The coolers are sweating.
Someone’s dad is turning burgers on the public grill.
The playground swings are too hot to touch.
But they do it anyway.
A thousand Saturdays, a hundred thousand, just like this one.
No plaques on the benches name the dead.
No statues for the mothers who packed the towels.

And the line for the diving board never ends.
A new kid every ten seconds.
Bare feet on the hot grip-tape.
A moment of flight.
A clean splash that the archives never heard.
Another summer that the county clerk forgot to file.
Just this blue water.
Holding it all.

The city keeps no ledger of the splashes.
No minutes were taken of the cannonballs.
No one wrote your name down, kid in the red trunks, 1993.
Or yours, girl with the pigtails, 2017.
There is no official record of this joy.
It doesn't exist.
Except right here.
In the smell of the chlorine.
In the heat rising from the pavement.

The line is gone now.
The sun is low.
The water is still.
Goodnight, old chair.
See you next June.