The Pool

The Pool


by Robert Creeley


My embarrassment at his nakedness,
at the pool’s edge,
and my wife, with his,
standing, watching—


this was a freedom
not given me who am
more naked,
less contained


by my own white flesh
and the ability
to take quietly
what comes to me.


The sense of myself
separate, grew
a white mirror
in the quiet water


he breaks with his hands
and feet, kicking,
pulls up to land
on the edge by the feet


of these women
who must know
that for each
man is a speech


describes him, makes
the day grow white
and sure, a quietness of water
in the mind,


lets hang, descriptive
as a risk, something
for which he cannot find
a means or time.



Robert Creeley, “The Pool” from Selected Poems of Robert Creeley. Copyright © 1991 by the Regents of the University of California. Reprinted with the permission of the University of California Press, www.ucpress.edu.