"Parachutes, My Love, Could Carry Us Higher" by Barbara Guest

Parachutes, My Love, Could Carry Us Higher

I just said I didn't know
And now you are holding me
In your arms,
How kind.
Parachutes, my love, could carry us higher.
Yet around the net I am floating
Pink and pale blue fish are caught in it,
They are beautiful,
But they are not good for eating.
Parachutes, my love, could carry us higher
Than this mid-air in which we tremble,
Having exercised our arms in swimming,
Now the suspension, you say,
Is exquisite. I do not know.
There is coral below the surface,
There is sand, and berries
Like pomegranates grow.
This wide net, I am treading water
Near it, bubbles are rising and salt
Drying on my lashes, yet I am no nearer
Air than water. I am closer to you
Than land and I am in a stranger ocean
Than I wished.

 
Source of the text - Barbara Guest, The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest, edited by Hadley Haden Guest.  Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2008, p. 14.

TJB: Flotsam-verse. Air, water & love are conflated here in float-images & net-images powered by comparative terms & deepened with conjunctions.