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With Emma at the Ladies-Only Swimming Pond on Hampstead Heath by Linda Gregerson

With Emma at the Ladies-Only Swimming Pond on Hampstead Heath

by Linda Gregerson

(published in her 1996 book, The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep,

Houghton Mifflin Company)


In payment for those mornings at the mirror while,

                        at her

            expense, I’d started my late learning in Applied


French Braids, for all

                        the mornings afterward of Hush

            and Just stand still,


to make some small amends for every reg-

                        iment-

            ed bathtime and short-shrifted goodnight kiss,


I did as I was told for once,

                        gave up

            my map, let Emma lead us through the woods


“by instinct,” as the drunkard knew

                        the natural

            prince. We had no towels, we had


no “bathing costumes,” as the children’s novels

                        call them here, and I

            am summer’s dullest hand at un-


premeditated moves. But when

                        the coppice of sheltering boxwood

            disclosed its path and posted


rules, our wonted bows to seemliness seemed

                        poor excuse.

            The ladies in their lumpy variety lay


on their public half-acre of lawn,

                        the water

            lay in dappled shade, while Emma


in her underwear and I

                        in an ill-

            fitting borrowed suit availed us of


the breast stroke and a modified

                        crawl.

            She’s eight now. She will rather


die than do this in a year or two

                        and lobbies,

            even as we swim, to be allowed to cut


her hair. I do, dear girl, I will

                        give up

            this honey-colored metric of augmented


thirds, but not (shall we climb

                        on the raft

            for a while?) not yet.





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