In this week’s poem, “Coexistence,” Ellen Goldsmith meditates on passages of time, movement, and the body. I love this poem’s vivid images, both visual and somatic, and its wonder for all that our aging bodies still hold.

Ellen Goldsmith is a poet and teacher. Her first book, No Pine Tree in This Forest Is Perfect won the 1997 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition. Her other chapbooks include Such Distances, Where to Look and, most recently, Left Foot Right Foot. Professor Emeritus of the City University of New York, she lives in Cushing.

Poets, note that submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. Deep Water is especially eager to share poems by Black writers, writers of color, indigenous writers, LGBTQ+ writers, and other underrepresented voices. You’ll find a link to submit in the credits below.

Coexistence

1.
One window frames a winter scene.
Bare branches.
Yet in the field, the burnt orange of oaks.
Dislocation and connection.

2.
Last summer, standing at the edge of the cove
where I no longer swim,
I felt myself gliding along the shore,
the water a brisk caress,
my body buoyant.

3.
It’s a mystery I embrace,
how my present reality coexists
with how my body moved decades ago.
It’s so much more than the memory
of leaping across the floor in dance class,
of sliding through water in my cove,
of running up the stairs, late to class.

– Ellen Goldsmith

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. ””Coexistence” copyright © 2024 by Ellen Goldsmith, appears by permission of the author. Submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. For more information, go to mainewriters.org/deep-water.