A Stump, A Flower

Barton Springs Early Morning Swim Report, 10/21/2023

A morning of apparitions, disapparitions, hallucinations, and lucid dreaming. I swam a mile, from dark to light. At the first glimmer of waterly illumination, I looked down and saw a man swimming so deep and true he looked small as a puppet. Later when it was fully light, I saw for the first time in ages a cormorant with an orange bill, the water turbid so it seemed to dissolve when it dove, and reassemble when it came to the surface. I swam past an underwater vegetation and rock formation that looked—hand to heart!—like an sea-creature pietà, though when I turned around and approached it from the other side it seemed more like a rampant bear. So I wasn’t surprised when my brain decided the tableau at the end of the pool was a man leaning over the edge to converse with a seal, instead of a man leaning over the edge to converse with a man in a wetsuit.

It was the first time I was there in daylight to see where Flo, the 100-year-old tree, used to be.

Later, as I drove home, fog lay over the sun and made it moony.