Next pageThe Swimmer is a play about a young woman, Christine, whose father dies in a boating accident just before she attempts to break the record for swimming the Catalina channel. This excerpt is from a scene in which she meets her dead father under the Pacific ocean. As they are forced apart back to the world of the living and the dead, they speak to each other in a jumbled, urgent desperation
How could the surface freeze above me? I dived in, why can't I dive back -- dive back into the sky and feel my lungs sail with air.
swirl hook root drip black lip rising clay feather
nest volcano black lip rising centerhole featherhole
roothole black rising lip cloudhole nesthole egghole black
rising lip foam rising from the egghole grasshopper
dragonfly milk black rising lip swirling flipping
rattlesnake you found a rattle, ten rings shake it at the sky,
where do rattlesnakes go to die roses buds milk sting black lip rising
The milk you gave me, the tree I wanted to climb and you lifted me into the branches and stood underneath while I swung and hung, foam rising from the egghole, stood underneath waiting for me, the battery run down, the laundry dirty, dishes halfway to the roof, dust under the beds, weeds in the garden, you waited for me underneath the tree black rising lip I looked up through the leaves, the sunlight swirling through the green earth wave crest foam you kept the sun up there the sun moved you made the sun move across the sky the way the moon makes the ocean move you stood underneath waiting and I climbed down on your back black rising lip and it wasn't true the mean story the woman down the street told me - - that snakes are in trees waiting for little girls who go climbing them she didn't want me to climb in her trees apples oranges avocadoes you told me climb this tree peaches apricots there aren't any snakes in trees waiting to eat little girls you climbed up the tree see, there isn't any snake up here but that's because the snake is hiding daddy, it knows you're not a little girl, it's waiting for me, it's hiding til I climb up there so you put on one of mommy's dresses and said, now this will fool the snake you climbed up the tree and still no snake came out hissing so I said yes I want to climb the tree and you lifted me into the branches I climbed and swung the bark smell like pollen after rain does it smell like the sky in the womb I rocked in the tree and I told you I am a tree let me climb on your shoulders so I can be the only moving tree in the whole world black rising lip the only migrating tree the only swimming tree the only tree to swim across the Pacific you told me watch out, you go to Hawaii, you'll end up a palm tree, you won't be an oak tree anymore VOLCANO NEST SWIMMING BLACK LIP RISING SWIMMING SWIMMING COIL BREAK THE COIL SHIMMER EDGE SWIMMING BLACK LIP RISING BREAK THE COIL sunlight swirling through the green wave, swallowing the snake I don't want to leave I love you but I love the tree more no I'm not going to come down I'm going to stay up here until I fall I love you tree love
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