Skimming

      It was nothing more than a summer job,

      hopping the low fence to my neighbor’s house,

      where I paid out the long hollow pole

      through my hands, and dipped the skimmer’s

      blue jaw into the pool to strain

      the insect wings, bird feathers

      and carob leaves that lay like the night’s

      siftings on a huge blue mirror.

      Evenings from our patio next door,

      I heard my neighbors thrashing

      in the shallow end, their voices

      wild in the cool element, their feet

      padding heavily over the concrete deck.

      And later, in darkness, they slipped back

      into the green water silently.

      The yellow glow of the citronella candle

      flickering far away through the oleanders.

      Its oily lemon fragrance heavy in the air. Sometimes I heard the woman crying, sometimes the man, and once I heard a gasp

      as dry and sharp and loud as someone

      taking a last breath before he drowns.

      Some mornings I’d find the pool light

      burning faintly in the deep end,

      the surface covered with all that was attracted

      to the submerged glow, and once I found

      a bat floating in the shallow pocket

      of the stairs. Its wings spread out

      like a Gothic W. Its feet angling

      from its belly like a ship’s screws.

      And lifting the black mass gently from the water,

      turning the skimmer over in the grass,

      I tapped the bat out and let it lie face up

      in the morning sun. Its features

      like a rubber mask’s, reddish, roughened,

      as if its passage out of the attic or cave

      had been difficult and the twilight air

      of the neighborhood provided nothing more

      than blue shadow on blue shadow.