Lifeguards

You either have one
or you don't, get dragged
to shore or swept out to sea.
Lucky diabetics and drunks
know him, see him hover near
their comas-beach-browned,
sun-streaked hair, strong-shouldered,
he's bored in his lonely, rickety tower
in the top of your head,
watching wave after wave
frothing on shore.

He tabulates your breast-stroke, your
breathy heartbeat. (Once
in Piccadilly Circus, getting off a bus,
I started to step into the street
when something stopped me,
and the speeding black taxi only
fluttered the front of my shirt.)
But he sees you drift
a little farther out each year until
one day you're so gone
in an eternity of warm Gulf Stream
the big blue-that waking from his drowse,
he doesn't even bother to grab
his float and begin to run.

Copyright © 2009 William Greenway All rights reserved
from Southern Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission